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Clarified Butter
To clarify butter heat it to boiling point, and let simmer gently until the salt settles and a frothy scum arises, leavuntil the salt settles and a frothy scum arises, leaving the oily portions transparent. Remove the scum, drain the oil carefully from the salt, and the clarified butter is ready for use. Butter in being clarified should never be allowed to scorch or become brown.
A short procedure with one hinge: the butter must never brown. The text is garbled by a printer's line repetition, but the method is intact.
- The one thing that mattersKeep the heat low enough that the milk solids on the bottom stay pale. Once they brown you have beurre noisette, which tastes good but is no longer neutral clarified butter and will not keep as long.
- What "the salt settles" meansThe recipe assumes salted butter, long the common household kind. The salt and milk solids sink; the water boils off; the clear fat is what you pour away. Unsalted butter works identically and gives you cleaner control of seasoning later.
- Boiling pointButter is roughly 15-18 percent water, and "boiling point" here is the water boiling out, not the fat. Expect vigorous sputtering for several minutes, then quiet — the silence is the signal that the water is gone.
- TimingA half pound over low heat takes 10-15 minutes. Larger quantities take longer but should not be rushed with higher heat.
- Skimming and strainingSkim the foam, then pour the clear fat off slowly and stop well before the sediment, or strain through a coffee filter or several layers of cheesecloth. Any solids left behind shorten the keeping time.
- YieldExpect about three quarters of the starting weight in usable fat: one pound of butter gives roughly 12 ounces, or a cup and a half.
- StorageWith the water and solids removed, clarified butter keeps for months refrigerated and weeks in a cool cupboard. It also has a much higher smoke point than whole butter, near 450F, which is the point of making it.
Clarifying butter solves two problems at once, and both mattered more in earlier kitchens than now. Before reliable refrigeration, butter went rancid quickly because of its water and milk solids; driving them off produced a fat that kept through warm weather, which is the logic behind Indian ghee, the same technique carried much further with a deliberate nutty cooking of the solids. The second use is culinary: without milk solids to burn, the fat will take a much higher heat, so it was the standard medium for frying cutlets and for finishing sauces. Nineteenth-century cookbooks also used clarified butter as a sealant, poured over potted meat or fish in a crock to exclude air. It is a pantry operation, not a dish, and the book expects the cook to already know what to do with the result.