Imagine, it's the early 1900s. You're a child, coming home from school or work. Of course, after a hard day you're hungry! Luckily, you know your Mum baked today so there will be bread for when you get home. Sometimes you wish you were more like the wealthy kids - they get butter and jam on their bread. At least your Mum keeps the dripping pot full.
When I took this dripping pot to show the children, and explained what dripping was, they were horrified. The children, who have grown up aware of the health risks of high fat foods and the 'Heart Foundation Tick Of Approval' found the very idea of having bread and dripping for afternoon tea, or even dinner disgusting. Children today are used to bread with butter or other spreads, and the idea of using what was essentially fat in place of such spreads was, as one child put it 'gross'. The idea of using it in place of butter in other dishes, including sweet cakes, was even more disturbing to the children, but as I showed them, it was not unusual.
In days gone by, nothing was wasted. Meat was expensive and you simply wouldn't throw any of it away, even the fatty juices which collect at the bottom of the roasting pan. Dripping is essentially the fat, separated from the juices, which comes off meat like beef, pork and lamb. It was often kept in a specific pot, like the one I showed the children, which had a type of sieve inside to catch chunks of meat. The liquid fell through the sieve and sat in the bottom, waiting to be used. The juices would set into a jelly, full of fat, but also full of flavour. Dripping pots usually contained a mixture of meat juices, not just from one type of meat but from many. A good housewife would maintain the dripping, keeping it fresh and clarifying it for use. You can see some articles about dripping from old cook books in the photo's accompanying this post. Although by todays standards it sounds 'gross', it was actually very popular in the past. It even used to be served in Pubs on slices of thick, crusty bread! My Great Grandmother always had a dripping pot and apparently my Great Grandfather loved slices of bread fried in the dripping it contained. Even my parents remember bread and dripping - it was still used well into the 1960's (probably until it was discovered just how bad for you it was!)
So, other than being used as a topping on bread, what would you use dripping for? Traditionally, to make the best Yorkshire Pudding and gravy, the Yorkshire Pudding batter is poured into a pan full of hot beef dripping. Sometimes it would simply be cooked in the pan under the roasting beef itself. Many still make it this way today. The best pastry is often made using lard (hard fat which you can buy in a block at the shops) which makes the pastry light and flakey. It can also be used as a strongly flavoured base for soups and stews. In the past though, especially at times when food was rationed and butter was hard to get, dripping was a quite serviceable substitute for butter in sweets, including cakes and biscuits. I even have cook books which provide instructions for limiting the meaty flavour of dripping in cakes! Many people remember it, especially bread and dripping, fondly as a comfort food. In fact, there is an article in the Sydney Morning Herald reminiscing about childhood comfort food which includes it! You can read the article, by Denise Gadd, here.