Ghee

Ghee has been produced and used in South Asia for at least 3,000 years — it appears in Vedic texts as a sacred ingredient and is central to Ayurvedic medicine, ceremonial ritual, and daily cooking throughout India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The word ghrita in Sanskrit predates ghee's English name. It was independently developed in similar forms across the Middle East (samn) and North Africa (smen/samnah).

Ghee — clarified butter cooked beyond the point of clarification until the milk solids caramelise to a nutty golden colour before being removed — is not simply clarified butter. Where French clarified butter is heated only until the milk solids separate and can be removed without browning, ghee is heated until the milk solids brown through the Maillard reaction, infusing the fat with complex, nutty, slightly caramelised aromatic compounds. The result is a fat with a much higher smoke point than butter (250°C (482°F) vs 175°C (347°F) for whole butter), an intense Maillard-developed flavour, and a shelf life of months without refrigeration.

Ghee is eaten with rice, dal, flatbreads and vegetables across the subcontinent, and it is the fat in which spices are tempered, so that it sits at both the beginning and the end of a dish. A spoonful over hot rice or dal, or brushed on a roti as it comes off the griddle, adds a rounded, nutty richness that carries the other flavours on the plate. The structural reason lies in the fat itself: the caramelised milk solids give a toasted note, and the fat dissolves the aromatic compounds of cumin, mustard seed, asafoetida Ferula assa-foetida and curry leaf Murraya koenigii, spreading them evenly through a dish when they are tempered in it. Ghee and cumin Cuminum cyminum is the plainest example, since the toasted character of the seed answers the nuttiness of the fat. Alford and Duguid, in Mangoes & Curry Leaves, treat ghee as a cooking fat of the subcontinent, and the dish it enriches wants plain accompaniments such as rice, bread and yoghurt, which let the fat speak.