(drippings in USA), the fat that drips from joints of meat, especially beef, when they are roasted. Stobart (1980), harking back to the days ‘when meat really had fat on it’, says:
When cold and solidified, some brown meat jelly was usually trapped and preserved under the fat. When the fat (especially of beef dripping) was mixed with the jelly, salted, and spread on toast, it used to be a standard—and delicious—appetite stopper for farm workers and children at tea time on raw evenings in winter or after skating. Dripping was also commonly clarified and used as a cooking fat. In that case, the distinction between dripping and rendered fat is mainly one of usage. Chicken fat, so much a part of Jewish cooking, is not called ‘chicken dripping’.
At an open hearth equipped with a spit for roasting, the dripping was caught in a tray beneath the joint. This was the reservoir from which cook might baste the rotating meat, and it might be the dish in which Yorkshire puddings were cooked in front of the fire, well anointed by the juices.
Kitchen fats, including dripping and tallow, were among the customary perquisites of the professed cook in Georgian England. Their sale to candle-makers and soap boilers made a useful adjunct to the annual stipend.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
