Butter
Butter is a semi-solid dairy fat made by churning cream until the fat globules merge and separate from the watery buttermilk. In beverages it adds richness, body, a silky mouthfeel, and calories. Its byproducts and derivatives, buttermilk and clarified butter or ghee, have their own long histories as drinks or drink ingredients.
How butter is prepared
Butter is churned with salted tea in Himalayan and Central Asian butter tea. It is melted into hot spiced drinks such as hot buttered rum and its non-alcoholic counterparts made with cider or hot water. It is beaten into butter-and-sugar batters for warm drinks and blended into coffee or tea as a modern energy drink. Bartenders use it to fat-wash spirits for flavor. Its churning byproduct, buttermilk, is drunk on its own, especially in South Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe.
Developing a browned ingredient through a documented preparation process.
MURI uses Browning on Butter for Browned-Butter & Kombu Fat Wash in MURI × ESSE: The Middle.[6]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
An old perfumery method that presses delicate aromatics into softened fat over several days to capture their scent before fat-washing.
The bergamot is blackened. Rose and blackened bergamot are pressed into softened butter over several days (enfleurage), before that butter is used to fat-wash the blend.[7]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
Infusing a liquid with fat, then chilling it so the fat solidifies and can be strained off, leaving an aromatic, fat-free liquid.
Butter infused with wild rose petals is used to fat-wash the fermented gooseberry base.[6]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
MURI uses Browned-Butter & Kombu Fat Wash in MURI × ESSE: The Middle: a fat wash using browned butter and kombu.[6]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
The producer documents wild-rose butter fat washing for the original Kadeau collaboration. No later recipe is inferred.[8]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
The bergamot is blackened. Rose and blackened bergamot are pressed into softened butter over several days (enfleurage), before that butter is used to fat-wash the blend.[7]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
Extracting an ingredient into a liquid or fat. Temperature and duration depend on the documented application.
Butter infused with wild rose petals is used to fat-wash the fermented gooseberry base.[6]
Service signal Works as a liquid component.
In depth
Ancient origins: churning and the first dairy drinks
Butter emerged after people in the Near East began herding livestock, and Sumerian tablets record both how it was made and its use as an offering. Butter-making has always produced a drink alongside the fat: agitating soured cream leaves behind a thin, tangy liquid, the original buttermilk. In the warm Mediterranean world, fresh butter spoiled too quickly to be a useful store of milk's nourishment. Greek and Roman writers treated it mainly as an ointment or a remedy and associated eating it with 'barbarian' peoples to the north and east. Butter's culinary and beverage roles therefore developed most strongly where cooler climates, pastoral economies, or clarification made it practical to keep.[1]
South Asia: ghee in sacred and ritual drinks
On the Indian subcontinent, butter was commonly simmered into ghee, a clarified fat that keeps far longer than fresh butter. Ghee has been central to Hindu ritual since the Vedic period. It is poured as an oblation into sacred fires. It is also one of the five components of panchamrita, a mixture of milk, curd, honey, sugar, and ghee used to bathe deity images on festival days and then shared among worshippers. Ghee also appears in traditional preparations of bhang, the cannabis-infused milk drink associated with certain festivals. There the fat helps extract and activate the plant's compounds. In these contexts, butterfat is less a flavoring than a carrier of purity, nourishment, and potency.[2]
Buttermilk: the drink left behind by the churn
Before refrigeration, milk was left to stand so the cream could rise. Naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria soured it, which made churning easier and turned the leftover liquid into a mildly acidic, long-lasting drink. That traditional buttermilk is nearly fat-free and remains a common beverage in South Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe, particularly where heat makes fresh milk spoil fast. In the Indian subcontinent, thin spiced buttermilk is a staple cooler. In Arab households, chilled buttermilk is a familiar part of Ramadan meals. In industrialized countries, butter is now usually made from fresh, uncultured cream, so most commercial buttermilk is instead produced by culturing pasteurized milk. Cultured buttermilk became popular as a drink in the United States in the early twentieth century, especially among Eastern European immigrants.[3]
The Himalaya and Central Asia: butter tea
Tea reached Tibet from China along trade routes by around the Tang era, but churning it with butter and salt became widespread later, roughly by the thirteenth century. The classic method boils compressed brick tea into a dark concentrate. That concentrate is then churned in a tall wooden cylinder with yak butter and salt until it emulsifies into a thick, savory, warming liquid. The drink is known in Tibetan as po cha and is made, under various names, across Bhutan, Nepal, Ladakh, northern Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia and western China. It supplies vital calories at high altitude. It is offered to every guest, with the host topping up the bowl after each sip, and it is served at monasteries, weddings, funerals, births, and New Year celebrations. Tsampa, roasted barley flour, is often mixed into it. Cow's-milk butter, tea bags, and electric blenders increasingly replace yak butter and the wooden churn.[4]
Colonial America and the Victorian bar: hot buttered drinks
In the British Isles and their colonies, butter was stirred into warm, sweetened, spiced drinks, a habit carried into the American colonies. There hot buttered rum became a household winter staple, with families keeping their own recipes and believing the drink to be fortifying. By the mid-nineteenth century, bartending manuals recorded versions combining sugar, rum, butter, and hot water, with or without cloves and allspice and often finished with grated nutmeg. The same template, butter melted into a hot sweet base with warming spices, works without spirits. Hot buttered cider and buttered spiced apple drinks are long-standing non-alcoholic counterparts.[5]
Twentieth-century revival: batters and winter nostalgia
Hot buttered drinks enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1940s, helped by popular fiction and the tropical-themed bar craze. Bartenders of that era complained that a pat of butter floating on a mug made a greasy, thin drink. They promoted a pre-mixed batter of butter creamed with brown sugar, salt, and spices that dissolves smoothly into hot liquid. That batter approach remains the standard home method. It lends itself equally to rum-based drinks and to alcohol-free versions built on hot water, cider, or coffee. Films and holiday culture cemented hot buttered drinks as emblems of snowy winters and festive gatherings in North America.[5]
Contemporary uses: butter coffee, fat-washing, and the cultured-butter revival
In the twenty-first century, butter has re-entered drinks through several routes. Blending unsalted butter, often with added oils, into black coffee or tea became popular as a high-fat morning drink. It is a modern echo of Himalayan butter tea and is favored by followers of low-carbohydrate diets. In cocktail and mixology circles, plain or browned butter is used to 'fat-wash' spirits: the butter is infused, frozen, and strained off, leaving its aroma without the grease. Interest in cultured butter, ghee, and traditional buttermilk has grown alongside the craft-food movement. Café menus feature spiced buttermilk drinks, ghee-enriched chai and coffee, and buttery batters for alcohol-free winter warmers, extending butter's long history as a source of richness and comfort in the cup.[1]
References
- [1]EncyclopediaButter — Wikipedia↑§1↑§7
- [2]EncyclopediaGhee — Wikipedia↑§2
- [3]EncyclopediaButtermilk — Wikipedia↑§3
- [4]EncyclopediaButter tea — Wikipedia↑§4
- [5]EncyclopediaHot buttered rum — Wikipedia↑§5↑§6
- [6]ProducerEsse X Muri Collaboration (muri-drinks.com)↑prepared↑prepared
- [7]Producerblog↑prepared
- [8]ProducerOur Story (muri-drinks.com)↑prepared