Grillons, or grattons (skretchings, cracklings, scribbings, graves, greaves) are solid scraps remaining after the fat parts have been melted down for lard, and the liquid poured off. They can be potted and eaten like rillettes, or, in the case of the mesentery, eaten immediately as an hors d’œuvre.

LARDING

Larding is the introduction of small strips of pork fat known as lardoons (lardons) into very lean meat such as fillet steak, pigeons, saddle of hare, which might otherwise be too dry when cooked. For this pleasant little job you need, like the roasting cooks in Perrault’s Riquet à la Houppe, a larding needle (lardoire), which is shaped like a very elongated, sharp-pointed cornet.

You can cut bacon fat into strips (lardonner) but the ideal is a nice slab of hard back fat, cut from under the skin of the loin. Chill it if possible, then cut into slices downwards and then across—see the illustration. Push each little lardon into the open end of the needle.

As one nineteenth-century cookery book says, seat yourself comfortably, lay a clean linen cloth on your left knee, then put the joint to be larded on top of the cloth. Take a stitch in the joint from right to left and pull the needle through, whilst releasing the lardon. It should project neatly at each end, like the second illustration.