Home › To Clarify Butter › To Clarify Butter
To Clarify Butter
321. Simmer it gently over a clear fire, and when melted take it off, skim it, and let the sediment settle. Pour the butter off clear into jars for use, keep them in a cool place. Some persons make a supply in the autumn, to serve when butter rises in price.
A one-line method that still works exactly as written; what has changed is the equipment and the storage advice.
- The hinge: low and slow"Simmer gently" means the butter should never brown or the milk solids will toast and colour the fat. Use the lowest burner setting, or a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water, and give it 15-20 minutes for a pound.
- What the three layers areFoam on top is whey protein, the clear gold middle is pure butterfat, and the milky sludge at the bottom is casein and water. Skim the first, pour off the second, discard the third.
- StrainingA jug lined with damp muslin or a coffee filter catches what skimming misses and gets you a noticeably clearer fat than pouring alone.
- YieldExpect about 75-80 per cent by weight: a pound (450 g) of butter gives roughly 12 oz (340 g) of clarified fat. Unsalted butter is preferable, for easier control of seasoning in whatever the fat is used for.
- Why botherWith the milk solids and most of the water gone, the smoke point rises from around 300F to roughly 450F, which is the point of the exercise for frying and sautéing.
- Jars and "a cool place"A cool larder was the coldest storage available. Clarified butter is stable because the water is gone, but modern kitchens are warmer: keep it refrigerated in a sealed jar, where it holds for months, and let it come to room temperature before use.
- Not quite gheeGhee is taken further, held over the heat until the solids brown and the butter takes on a nutty flavour. The instruction here to stop as soon as it melts gives the paler, neutral version.
Clarifying was as much a preservation technique as a cooking one. Butter spoils because of the water and milk protein dispersed through it; drive those off and what remains is nearly pure fat that keeps for months without ice. The closing remark about laying in a supply in the autumn points at the old seasonal rhythm of dairying, when cows in milk on summer grass made butter cheap and plentiful and winter made it dear, so thrifty households potted or clarified a surplus while the price was low. The same logic produced potted meats sealed under a layer of clarified butter, a standard British larder practice well into the twentieth century, and it is the same principle behind ghee in South Asian kitchens, where a hot climate made keeping fresh butter impractical.