SC - thanks

[marilyn traber]

Mark Schuldenfrei wrote:
> 
> Adamantius wrote:
>   Butter is an emulsion, a perfect mixture of an oil and water, which
>   under normal circumstances don't want to mix. In this case, they do
>   anyway. When you melt butter, it becomes a relatively thin liquid, and
>   the emulsion "breaks" apart into its two parts again, which is why you
>   can skim the clear butterfat off the top, and leave the rest behind, and
>   it is this clarified butterfat that is what most modern people think of
>   as drawn butter (which, by the way, is NOT the same thing as the ghee
>   used in Indian and Midle Eastern cookery, but don't get me started).
> 
> Sure, why not.
> 
> Butter is not just oil and water (technically, fats and water), but it also
> has lots of milk proteins in it.

I spoke in generalization. Sorry. You're right, butter has water, fats,
lots of sugar, and some proteins.

  Ghee is the coagulated protein, and it
> part of what makes Indian food so darned yummy.

That's something I wasn't aware of. I understood ghee to be the "mostly
butterfat" phase of the melted liquid, but the proteins should be living
in with the other milk solids, down at the bottom, with a lot of water
in the case of ordinary clarified butter, and as a somewhat caramelized
sediment in the case of ghee. But with ghee, you filter the sediment
out. It may have other culinary uses (would be great kneaded into
chapatti or poori dough).
> 
>   In [late] period cookery parlance butter would have been "drawn" by
>   melting it VERY slowly and on a very gentle heat, like in a double
>   boiler or some such, with another liquid, beating it as it melts. So you
>   find sauces made from things like the vinegar that a fish was marinated
>   in, with butter melted into it and whipped to form a relatively thick,
>   creamy sauce, along the lines of modern beurre blanc or hollandaise.
>   Yummers.
> 
> This is also how you should make drawn butter today.  Gently (oh, so gently)
> heat it so that it slowly melts, and keep stirring it so the part most
> exposed to heat does not brown.  Not that brown butter isn't also a yummy
> treat (because it is) but because it isn't drawn butter.

The difference, though, is that period drawn butter is not separated,
but rather encouraged to remain a thick emulsion after other stuff (even
if only water) is added. The drawn butter you get with lobster is more
like standard French clarified butter: melted, allowed to separate, and
either chilled and removed as a solid mass for remelting, or skimmed
free of foam, and then skimmed off the top of the milky stuff at the
bottom. Personally I love a good drawn butter with scallions and whisky
on crab, but lobster will do in (ahem) a pinch.
> 
>                           In any case, flour-thickened drawn butter sauces
>   appear to have originated in England in the late eighteenth, early
>   nineteenth centuries.
> 
> Interesting.  I was under the impression it came from France.  (And I've
> always wondered if it came from Rouen... :-)  What leads you to the opposite
> conclusion (France and England being culinary opposites.  :-)  I admit, my
> post period cookery knowledge is weak until we hit this century.

Only the available recipes I've seen, which in England very frequently
use a small amount of flour-and-butter thickener with stock or water,
and then have some butter beaten into that. French recipes tend to
thicken other stuff with various starches (although even that is going
out of fashion to a large extent), but butter sauces, with only a very
few exceptions, are primarily thickened only by the power of
emulsifiers, either the relatively weak ones found in butter itself, or
by adding egg yolks, which are full of lecithin.
 
>   But, drawing butter up with a small amount of just water , or vinegar,
>   or some other watery liquid is still alive and well (in dishes like REAL
>   fettucine Alfredo, f'rinstance), just as it would have been done in
>   period. At least in late period, anyway.
> 
> Indeed.  Proper Fettucine Alfredo is a gift of the gods.  (In my case, they
> are not friendly gods.  :-)  I used to love to eat a version that was
> semi-primavera-ish, with steamed or braised scallion, red peppers, and
> peas.
> 
>         Tibor (Back when I ate like a man, I truly ate!)

A friend was at a serious Polish wedding a while back, and the groom's
dad offered to "teach" him "to drrink like MAN!!!" You just reminded me
of that. Yup, real fettucine Alfredo is truly a man's dish, and a good
dose of angioplasty is probably the appropriate manly dessert. <SIGH>

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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