Ghee

“ We have ghee"—a clarified butter made of buffalo or cow's milk—"and goor"—unrefined sugar. "And we have spices for our dhal—ginger and garlic and chilli and turmeric. Yea, and fruits also—apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. What more can man want?" ”

“ The flavour of this water pickle is superior to any other acid, and possesses the property of purifying the blood.
'Mittie wallah' [17] (Man with sweetmeats) .—The many varieties of sweetmeats, or rather confectionery, in general estimation with the natives, are chiefly composed of sugar and ghee, prepared in countless ways, with occasional additions of cocoa-nut, pistachias, cardimuns, rose-water, &c., and constantly hawked about the streets on trays by men. ”

“ Method.—Cut the meat and onions into thin slices, and fry them in hot ghee until lightly browned. Add the flour, stir over the fire until it acquires a nut-brown colour, then cover with stock and simmer very slowly until the meat is half cooked. Strain off the gravy, and again fry the meat in hot ghee or fat with the cloves and coriander seeds previously ground to a fine powder. Replace in the stewpan, add the strained gravy, stock and milk, bring to the boil, and thicken with ground rice. ”

“ The arrival of an English acquaintance, who explained to the landlady the religious prejudices of her lodger, in some measure relieved him from his embarrassment; but he was again totally disconcerted, by finding it impossible, after a long search, to procure any ghee—an ingredient indispensable in the composition of every national dish of India, whether Moslem or Hindu. "How shall I express my astonishment at this extraordinary ignorance? What! do they not know what ghee is? Wonderful! ”

“ Here he produced some ghee and chupatties, and half a dozen raw eggs. The feast might not tempt an epicure, but its components were excellent and Frank was well aware that the ghee was exceedingly nutritious, though nauseating to European taste, being practically rancid butter made from buffalo milk.
There was plenty of fodder for the horses, too, and they showed their good condition by eating freely. ”

“ According to ancient authors, if a man pounds the seeds or roots of the trapa bispinosa, the kasurika, the tuscan jasmine, and liquorice, together with the kshirakapoli (a kind of onion) , and puts the powder into milk mixed with sugar and ghee, and having boiled the whole mixture on a moderate fire, drinks the paste so formed, he will be able to enjoy innumerable women. ”

“ The plains are rich in grain, and the hills in cattle, when not harried, as they had been, a little before our arrival, by the Warori. The inhabitants sometimes offer for sale milk and honey, eggs and ghee, but—only the civilised rogue can improve by adulteration—the milk falls like water off the finger, the honey is in the red stage of fermentation, of the eggs there are few without the rude beginnings of a chicken, and the ghee, from long keeping, is sweet above and bitter below. ”

“ Oh! what a great sin it must be in the eyes of God! Let us hasten and go, O 'Abbās! before the children get wearied of crying, and fall asleep, as she said.'
He then went on, quickening his pace, and I accompanied him. He was panting like an ox from fatigue [15] , until we reached the old woman's tent. He then put down the bag of flour from his shoulder and I laid the jar of ghee before him. Then he himself went forward, and, taking the cooking-pot, poured out its contents, and, putting some of the ghee into it, added some flour [16] . ”

“ We spread our hides under a tree, and were soon surrounded by Bedouins, who brought milk, sun-dried beef, ghee and honey in one of the painted wooden bowls exported from Cutch. After breakfast, at which the End of Time distinguished himself by dipping his meat into honey, we went out gun in hand towards the bush. ”

“ He will bring much ghee and put it into the cauldron, till when it gets hot, he will tie up a swing and say to you, 'Get up and play.' Tell him, 'I do not know how to play at this; you get up yourself first, that I may look at you, and I may get to do as you do;' and when he gets up to show you, push him into the cauldron of hot ghee, and come away quickly, and I will come and wait for you under the tree there in the road. ”

“ Few of the natives will touch cow-butter, to which they attribute many bad effects, though they will drink ghee by the quart, and pride themselves not a little in being able to afford so luscious an enjoyment. The uncontrolled expenditure of this article, among those whose purses will bear them out in the indulgence, though it may tend to that obesity of which they are inordinately vain, cannot but contribute greatly to the generation of those bilious diseases which so often attack the more opulent natives. Ghee and idleness may be said to give birth to half their ailings. ”

“ I am very sorry to heat that your health is not yet all right. Can you go to a very cold climate where there is plenty of snowfall in the winter, Darjeeling, for instance? The severity of the cold will set your stomach right, as it has done in my case. And can you give up altogether the habit of using ghee and spices? Butter digests more quickly than ghee. ”

“ Now pour over it the buttermilk, add the cardamoms and cloves, a teaspoonful of salt, the juice of the green ginger, and let it soak for 1 hour. Fry the onions in a little hot ghee, add the ginger, coriander, cinnamon, cumin and saffron, put in the fish, and cover with the rice, previously parboiled. Add a little of the buttermilk, pour over the whole the melted ghee, cover closely, and cook as slowly as possible for about 1 hour, serve hot.
Time.—11⁄2 hours. Sufficient for 6 or 7 persons. Cost, 1s. 9d. to 2s. 3d. ”

“ Kine produce food not only by assisting at tillage of the soil, but also by aiding in the performance of sacrifices. The ghee burnt in the sacrificial fire sustains the under-deities, who pour rain and cause crops to grow. ”

“ Ghee is a kind of butter made from the milk of these animals, and clarified. This is an article of commerce in various parts of India, and is generally conveyed in bags or bottles made of the hide, each of which holds from ten to forty gallons. The flesh is said somewhat to resemble beef, but to be of a darker colour: that of the calves is considered peculiarly delicate. Of the skin is made a strong and durable leather, which, under the name of buff leather, is applicable to a great variety of uses. The horns have a fine grain, are strong, and bear a good polish ”

“ Named from the combination of fresh sweet milk curds pressed together with fresh butter. A popular breakfast food in Inverness and the Ross Shires. When kept for months it develops a high flavor. A similar curd and butter is made by Arabs and stored in vats, the same as in India, the land of ghee, where there's no refrigeration. ”

“ Of milk a large catalogue of drinks can be reckoned. First, there are the different kinds of milk of different animals, as the milk of asses, of women, of goats, of cows, of sheep, of reindeer, of camels, of sows, and of mares. Then it may be swallowed as it is drawn, or in the form of whey, or curdled. Ghee [166] is a common favourite throughout all India. It is a stale butter clarified by boiling and straining, and then set to cool, when it remains in a semi-liquid or oily state, and is used in cooking, or is drunk by the natives. ”

“ As soon as the meat is sufficiently dry add the coriander, cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms and cumin seeds, all previously pounded or ground, mix well together, place the rice on the top, over which spread the green chumah dhall, and pour upon it the remaining ghee previously melted. ”

“ It is sweet and a little bitter, but very much so during digestion; it is hot, light; increases understanding; is vermifuge; useful in boils and eruptions of an obstinate nature; is pungent; cures pains in the parts of generation of the female, marasmus, gonorrhœa, and disorders of bile. If the plant be pulled out by the root before it flowers, and dried in the shade, and ate with wheat flour, cow’s ghee, and sugar, it will restore and preserve youth, and prevent the hair from becoming grey; and if pounded and often used in powder, it will be found peculiarly tonic. ”

“ In the Eastern regions it is converted into ghee by simply melting over the fire: it is not boiled to expel the remnant of sour milk, impurities are not removed by skimming, and finally it becomes rancid [285] and bitter by storing in pots and gourds which have been used for the purpose during half a generation. The Arabs attempt to do away with the nauseous taste by throwing into it when boiling a little water, with a handful of flour or of unpowdered rice. Westward of Unyamwezi butter is burned instead of oil in lamps. ”

“ He is usually docile, but is slow and lazy and during the heat of the day will not work more than two hours at a time without his mud bath. The female gives abundant milk, from which ghee, a kind of butter is made. The hide makes valuable leather. ”

“ He states that it has a pleasant taste though very sour, and that it is used in dyeing; and further that the peel serves to make a sort of vinegar. Several succeeding authors (as Bauhin and Ray) have contented themselves with repeating this account.
As to the fruit yielding a fatty oil, we find no reference to such fact till about the year 1830, when it was stated in an Indian newspaper [356] that an oil of the seeds is well known at Goa and often used to adulterate ghee (liquid butter) . ”

“ Adulterations of honey are starch, detectable by the microscope, and by its blue reaction with iodine, also wheaten flour, gelatin, chalk, gypsum, pipe-clay, added water, cane-sugar and common syrup, and the different varieties of manufactured glucose. Honey sophisticated with glucose containing copperas as an impurity is turned of an inky colour by liquids containing tannin, as tea. Elm leaves have been used in America for the flavouring of imitation honey. Stone jars should be employed in preference to common earthenware for the storage of honey, which acts upon the lead glaze of the latter. ”

“ The component parts of wheat, rye, and barley flour, are,—fecula, or starch, gluten, and saccharine mucilage. Fecula is the most nutritive part of grain. It is found in all seeds, and is especially abundant in the potato. Gluten is necessary to the production of light bread; and wheat flour, containing it in the greatest proportion, answers the purpose better than any other. The saccharine mucilage is equally necessary, as this is the substance on which yeast and leaven act, in producing the internal commotion in the particles of dough during fermentation. ”

“ All the cereal grains, as millet, rice, maize, rye, barley and oats are utilized more or less by the inhabitants of the countries where these are cultivated, but wheat is the most suited for the purpose of making the best qualities of bread. Wheaten flour contains in slightly varying proportions, according to the kind of wheat from which it is manufactured, starch, gluten—a grey, viscid, elastic, nitrogenous substance, consisting chiefly of vegetable fibrine—sugar, gum, mineral matter and water. ”

“ The weight of gluten contained in 100 lbs. of dry wheat has been found to vary from 8 to 34 lbs., and this proportion is affected in a very remarkable manner by the kind of manure which has been applied to the land. Thus the proportions of starch and gluten in 100 lbs. of the grain of the same wheat, grown on the same land, differently manured, was as follows:—
Potato-flour, which consists entirely of starch, makes a fine light bread, easily raised. ”

“ Under the first head, that of farinaceous seeds, are included wheat, rye, oats, Indian corn, rice, and a variety of less-known grains, all possessing in greater or less degree the same constituents. It will be impossible to more than touch upon many of them; and wheat must stand as the representative, being the best-known and most widely used of all grains. Each one is made up of nitrogenous compounds, gluten, albumen, caseine, and fibrine, gluten being the most valuable. Starch, dextrine, sugar, and cellulose are also found ”

“ When this hath boiled so long, that you judge the water hath drawn out all the vertue of the Herbs (which may be in half an hour) pour out all into a vatte to cool and settle. Scum away the herbs, and pour the clear from the sediment, and to every four gallons of liquor (luke-warm) put one gallon of honey, and lave it to dissolve the honey, letting it stand two or three days, laving it well thrice every day. Then boil it till it will bear an Egge high, then clarifie it with whites and shells of Eggs, and pour it into a vatte to cool, which it will do in a days space or better. ”

“ It has been supposed that the absorbing power of flour depended mainly upon its gluten. But Johnson holds the position in doubt. Whereas, Webster (of England) states that it is with the starch, principally, that water combines. The per cent. of starch, sugar, and gluten, etc., in wheat, depends on the soil and climate;—on the soil, because it must derive from it, originally, the elements of its existence; on climate, because these elements require a certain temperature and quantity of light for their perfect elaboration. ”

“ Very few millers trouble themselves to make a perfect whole wheat flour. I know but one establishment in the world where wheat and other grains are treated precisely as they should be, with all the harmful part removed and the rest made digestible by harmless methods, and that is the Health Food Company of New York. [1]
[1] See Appendix, page 30.
Bread leavened, or unleavened, made out of what is called the Cold Blast Whole Wheat Flour, makes more muscle and furnishes more food for the nerves than any other article of [Pg 21] food given to man except the pure gluten of wheat. ”