Fats of the matter: Ghee is good, but could butter be better?

Many people—cooks, chefs, diners—believe ghee to be superior to butter. Butter is 80% fat, 16% water and 4% protein, lactose and salts. Ghee, on the other hand, is much more concentrated, with 99% fat and just 1% trace elements. Devoid of water and milk proteins, ghee has a longer shelf life. It lasts months at room temperature, unlike butter which goes rancid in a matter of days.

Ghee scores over butter when cooking too. Heat butter above 120 degrees Celsius and its milk proteins will cause it to scorch. Ghee comfortably heats up to 200 degrees Celsius —you can use it to deep-fry, if you’re feeling indulgent. It’s explains why ghee is so popular in India, and is increasingly used across the world.

So why not replace ghee with butter in all the recipes?

Because the science and the flavour profile make all the difference. To make ghee, you must first boil away the water. Next, you scoop up the bits of whey protein that form the foam, and filter out the casein protein in the sediments. These may seem like a small component of the process, but they play a significant role in what makes butter what it is.

Think of recipes for paneer butter masala or pav bhaji, which call for the butter to be added at the very end so the sauce gets a creamy texture and glossy. If you added ghee instead, it would most likely float on top; since fat and water do not like to mix. What you need is an emulsifier to help create creaminess.

Proteins contain amino acids that have long chains with some fat soluble regions and some water compatible ones. These help with the mixing in a way that protein-free ghee cannot. The two best protein emulsifiers that cooks use to create smooth, creamy sauces are casein in butter and egg yolks. Those gobs of butter that show up on Youtube videos and in street foods might scare you. But they’re the secret to silky sauces.

One area where butter scores over ghee is baking. It assists in the leavening process. Cake recipes often start with whisking butter and sugar together. Try this with ghee and sugar and sugar will sit at the bottom, refusing to play. But butter, which has water in it, will help sugar latch on. Air traps easily in the solid butter fat. And the network of sugar, butter and air expands when heated in the oven (along with leavening agents like baking powder) creating light, fluffy cakes.

Butter is more spreadable on bread. But it’s also great at providing texture to baked goods. Bakers add butter between layers of dough for puffs or croissants. In the oven, water in the butter turns to steam, leaving behind the rich flaky pastry we love so much.

Butter and ghee are each delicious in their own way. Ghee has a nutty aroma that partially comes from cooking the milk solids. Studies have identified 36 volatile aroma compounds in ghee, with the dominant flavour coming from short chain fatty acids, ketones and aldehydes.

Butter because it is less heat treated, has at least 230 aroma compounds. The most pronounced flavour is diacetyl (commonly isolated and used as butter flavouring). Other flavours include methyl ketones and lactones, which produce that aroma of freshly baked goods made with butter.

Ghee is good, but for certain applications, butter is better. Now you know why.