Both sets of grandparents had dairy farms, but lard was used for flakiness and in the case of strudel, stretchiness. My Austrian grandma used the entire kitchen table and pulling it thin enough to see through, the photo in this lard article shows a strudel being rolled up just as I remember. http://www.motherlindas.com/lard.htm Another memory is Christmas goose swimming in a pan of fat. No fear of fat there, yet my mother made pie crusts with Crisco ( or Fluffo, a Crisco with some added yellow dye poison ) The campaign to convince people that vegetable shortening was better was incredibly effective.