SC - drawn butter?

[Mark Schuldenfrei]

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

  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.
  
                          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.


  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!)
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