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English is weird
zmeiat_joro:
--- Quote from: cybersmurf on 13 Oct 2020, 11:44 ---
--- Quote from: Tova on 17 Sep 2020, 22:40 ---I've decided that I prefer the term 'schmaltz' over 'saccharine' to refer to something that is excessively sentimental but that I also have a soft spot for in spite of that, purely because the latter refers to artificial sweetener (which is awful), whereas the former refers to chicken or goose fat (which is awesome*).
* In moderation as part of a balanced diet.
--- End quote ---
Sorry for digging this up a month later, but I just stumbled over this again.
In German exists the word "Schmalz". Which literally means ... lard. Pure, unadulterated fat, and (around here) typically pork fat. So, if I twist this a little, you're basically saying "everything is better with bacon", apparently even sentimentalism.
--- End quote ---
I think "schmaltz" is American English for "poultry fat", while in German it's typically pork fat. Like "pastarmi" is New York English for a kind of dried beef jerky, while in Southeast Europe and Anatolia "pastarma" is pork .
My mom just told me pastarma can be made with goat and horse meat also.
Morituri:
In America, pork fat is 'lard' in some contexts and 'suet' in others. And I think it varies mostly by temperature, in that 'lard' is room-temperature or warmer (or if it has been cooked no matter its current temperature) and 'suet' is room-temperature or colder.
Either I have that wrong, or it's particularly odd. But there's nothing odd about oddity. After all we're talking about dialects of English that aren't even English.
N.N. Marf:
I just read an eerie similarity of english ``acorn''---the oak fruit---german ``Eichhörn'' (the ``-chen'' is diminutive)---the creature stereotyped as eating oak fruit. In both cases, there's a false folk etymology, related to oak: english has it like oak-corn but really just meant tree nuts, german has Eiche (oak) Horn (not sure how horn is even remotely squirrelley) but it's really ``aig'' (swiftness) + ``wer'' (burning).
Cornelius:
I thought suet was specifically the fat around kidney's and loins, used raw, whereas lard is generally pork fat, that is processed - i.e. cooked and purified.
Also, suet is mostly beef or mutton fat, it seems. If purified, it's known here as Ossewit (Ox white), and mostly used for deepfrying.
In my experience, lard and suet can both be used interchangeably in a lot of recipes, as in, you will get a somewhat decent result, but it will taste differently. If I remember correctly, they have different melting and boiling points as well, so you need to be careful about burning. Especially if you use the unpurified version. But maybe that's something we should take to the cooking thread.
Tova:
Since this conversation continues, I decided to pull my copy of fat by Australian chef Jennifer McLagan off my shelf to see what she has to say about it. I'm not going to try to claim this to be definitive, but ... well, she's obviously more authoritative than I am.
suet: kidney fat, found in the animal's cavity (usually beef fat, sometimes lamb fat).
lard: rendered pork fat.
schmaltz: In the Jewish kitchen, refers to rendered poultry fat; however, the word is German in origin, where it often refers to pork fat.
I think all of this has popped up in this thread from a variety of posters.
Exercise for the reader: Schweineschmaltz, Flomenschmalz, Griebenschmaltz, Gänseschmalz.
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