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Butter, Clarified
Melt some butter in a perfectly clean saucepan; remove the scum, etc., which will rise to the top, and let it stand by the side of the fire for all impurities to sink to the bottom. Strain it carefully through a sieve, leaving the sediment at the bottom of the saucepan. Butter should be clarified before it is used to cover potted meats, etc. When it is hot it may be used instead of olive-oil, and is liked better than oil by many cooks, both for salads and for other purposes. Time to melt, about three minutes.
A straightforward rendering method that still works exactly as described, though a few of the assumptions behind it belong to a coal range and a cold larder.
- Low heat is the whole trickThe butter should never come above a bare simmer, or the milk solids brown and you have brown butter rather than clarified. Cassell's "by the side of the fire" means the cooler edge of the range; on a modern hob that is the lowest setting, or a bowl over barely simmering water.
- "Three minutes" is melting time onlyThe recipe's timing covers the melt, not the whole operation: melt, skim, then hold still while the casein settles, which for a modest quantity may take a further quarter of an hour or more. Rushing the settling stage is why home-clarified butter often stays cloudy.
- StrainingA sieve alone will not catch fine curd. Line it with two layers of muslin or a coffee filter, and pour slowly so the sediment stays behind in the pan.
- YieldReckon on about 75-80 per cent by weight: 1 lb (450 g) of butter gives roughly 12 oz (340 g) of clarified fat. Unsalted butter gives a cleaner result, as salt concentrates in the fraction you are discarding.
- Smoke pointWith the milk solids gone the fat tolerates roughly 230-250C (450-480F) instead of something like 150-175C (300-350F) for whole butter, which is why it stands in for oil in frying. It is not, however, a good substitute in a salad dressing: it is solid at ordinary room temperature and will seize in a vinaigrette.
- Potted meatsThe butter seal described here was a larder technique, not a preserving one. A layer of clarified butter excludes air but does nothing against Clostridium botulinum in an anaerobic, room-temperature pot. Potted meats made this way belong in the refrigerator and should be eaten within a few days.
- StoragePoured into a clean jar and covered, clarified butter keeps for months chilled and several weeks in a cool cupboard, since it is the milk solids and water that spoil first.
Clarifying butter is one of the oldest ways of making a perishable fat keep, and Victorian kitchens made regular use of it: as a frying medium, as a sealing layer over potted meats and fish paste, and in drawn and melted butter sauces. The same technique, taken further so the milk solids toast before straining, gives Indian ghee, where the object is flavour and shelf life in a hot climate rather than a clean neutral fat. The book's remark that many cooks preferred it to olive oil is a reminder that good olive oil was an imported commodity in nineteenth-century Britain and its condition on arrival was uneven, while butter was local and plentiful.