Shortening: The One Word That Can Mean Lard

Most ambiguous ingredient names hide a plant source. This one has a genuine chance of hiding pork fat, and American labels have used the word both ways for a century.

'Shortening' is not a substance. It is a job description. Any fat that is solid at room temperature and used to make baked goods tender can be called shortening, and historically in the United States the fat doing that job was lard.

That history matters because the word survived the change in what it usually refers to. A label saying 'shortening' in 1930 meant pork fat. In 2026 it usually means hydrogenated vegetable oil. 'Usually' is the problem.

Why it is called that

Fat interferes with gluten strands forming in dough, which keeps the strands short — hence shortening, and hence shortbread. A pastry made with shortening is crumbly rather than chewy. It is a functional term from the bakery, not from chemistry.

What it can be

• Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil — soybean, cottonseed, palm, canola. The dominant modern meaning in US packaged food.
• Palm oil and palm stearin — increasingly common since trans-fat rules pushed manufacturers away from partial hydrogenation.
• Lard — rendered pork fat. Prohibited. Still used, particularly in traditional baking, some pie crusts, tortillas, refried beans and Latin American products.
• Tallow — rendered beef or mutton fat. Depends on the slaughter, which in a commercial rendering stream is generally not Islamic.
• Blends — 'animal and vegetable shortening' is a real label phrase, and it is telling you it contains both.

How to read the label

1. 'Vegetable shortening', 'shortening (palm oil)', 'all-vegetable shortening' — stated, plant, done. Most major US brands say this because it is a selling point.
2. 'Shortening' with no qualifier — usually vegetable, but this is the case that needs checking. Look for the fat named elsewhere in the list, or for a vegan or kosher-pareve mark.
3. 'Lard', 'pork fat', 'manteca' — prohibited. 'Manteca' is the Spanish word and appears on products sold in the US.
4. 'Animal shortening', 'animal and vegetable shortening', 'tallow', 'beef fat', 'suet' — animal, and depends on the slaughter at best.
5. A kosher mark is unusually useful here, because lard cannot appear in any kosher product. A pareve mark additionally excludes dairy. Kosher does not settle the beef slaughter question for Muslims, but it does settle the pork one.

The categories where lard actually persists

Being specific is more useful than general caution:

• Refried beans — traditional recipes use lard, and many canned versions still do. Vegetarian versions are labelled as such precisely because of this.
• Flour tortillas — some brands use lard, many now use vegetable shortening.
• Pie crusts and pastry, particularly frozen and bakery-fresh rather than shelf-stable.
• Tamales and masa preparations.
• Some traditional European baked goods and imported biscuits.
• Restaurant and bakery items, where there is no ingredient label at all and asking is the only method.

The related fat words

Shortening sits in a family of terms with the same ambiguity, and they show up in the same products:

• Mono- and diglycerides — emulsifiers made from fats, source unstated. Same question.
• Stearic acid and the stearates — same question.
• Glycerin — same question.
• Suet — raw beef or mutton kidney fat. Named honestly.
• 'Edible fats', 'animal fats', 'fully refined fats' — phrases on imported labels that answer nothing.

A product containing several of these unqualified fat terms is not more suspicious than one containing a single one; they all come off the same supplier decision. Resolving the manufacturer's fat sourcing usually resolves the whole label at once.

How we treat it

Lard, pork fat and manteca are hard blocks. Unqualified 'shortening' moves a product into review rather than blocking it, because the modern default is vegetable and blocking on the word alone would remove most of the bakery aisle on a probability that points the other way.

A product stating vegetable shortening, or carrying a halal, kosher or vegan mark, clears. Refried beans, tortillas and pastry get looked at more carefully than the word alone would justify, because that is where the exception actually lives.