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Culinary Arts & Cooking vocabulary · Ingredients, Stocks & Sauces

Shortening

Meaning in culinary arts & cooking, with examples

nounCommon term

In culinary arts & cooking, shortening means: Fat used to make pastry tender and crumbly, often a solid vegetable fat in modern recipes.

In Turkish: hamur yağı, katı pastacılık yağı

How it is used

The broader baking function and the packaged product sense both occur.

Example sentences

  1. The pie recipe uses shortening for a crumbly crust.

    The fat helps produce a tender pastry structure.

  2. She weighed the vegetable shortening separately from the butter.

    Vegetable specifies the source of the fat product.

Common collocations

  • vegetable shortening
  • pastry shortening
  • ingredientOne of the foods or other items, such as flour, oil or salt, that are combined to make a particular dish.
  • pastry chefA chef who specialises in desserts, pastries, breads and other baked goods and usually runs the pastry section of a kitchen. Also called a pâtissier.

More terms: Ingredients, Stocks & Sauces

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