O-M-Ghee

This cooking oil is made from butter that's been browned and clarified to produce something as delicious as it is shelf-stable. Anney and Lauren dip into the science and history of ghee.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Save for Protection of I Heart Radio.
I'm any and I'm more on Loco Bomb and today
we have an episode for you about G. Yes. Oh yes, uh,
And I struggled a lot. I was very concerned about
the pronunciation. But I think I've got it. I think
I can do it. Um yeah, we'll see, we'll see.

(00:29):
Was there any particular reason this was on your mind?
Was there? I love how every time I ask you this,
you're like, it could have been it was days and
days ago, it could have done anything. Um, it would
have been. I'm gonna go ahead and say no, no,
just absolutely, it just it just a sprung fully formed

(00:53):
into my mind. Ah. Or you have a mysterious system
which I really really appreciate. Actually, and I don't know
how it functions, so I'm just kind of like, oh okay, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah,
I don't know how it functions either. It's a mystery
to all of us. It's a possibility that I was

(01:18):
like looking into like maybe like a cheese in our
rotation of topic concepts, and I was looking at Panier
and then I kind of uh hard shifted over to
G and then when you know what, yes, yes, the time,
the time is right, Uh, something in the air. Yeah,

(01:41):
I just wanted to talk about butter again, I'm not
sure m hm. And paneer is also a great topic,
which we will return to one. Oh oh absolutely, yeah, yes, yes, yes,
I will say. I don't have too much experience with Actually,
I'm sure I've had in a ton stuff. Yeah. My mom,

(02:03):
funnily enough, she uses it a lot, really, but she
only started to use it after I moved down, all right,
she uses it all the time. Uh. Yeah, I've never
made it myself. Um, And having done all of this reading,
I'm like, okay, well that's on the list. But but yeah, yeah, no,

(02:24):
I've I've cooked with it a few times. Um, I've
got friends who use it yeah all the time and
just saying its praises continually. Um and yeah, as we
have talked about many times on the show, I do,
I do love all of the really beautiful Indian slash
South Asian subcontinent cuisine restaurants around Atlanta. And uh, it's

(02:51):
basically just like making me want like beer Yanni again.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, my little brother is going to
hang out with me this and he's vegetarian and usually
when we hang out. We get Indian food because they
have so many great vegetarian options, and I'm already like
excited and playing what I'm gonna get everything? Oh yeah, okay,

(03:14):
Well does this bring us to our question? I suppose
it does. What is it? Well? Ge is a butter
product that has been cooked down and strained to remove
the water content and the milk solids, respectively, leaving pretty

(03:35):
much just the fat and the fat soluble stuff. Uh.
It is a soft, solid, room temperature and can be
stored at room temperature without spoiling. It's also got some
like nutty or toasty flavors from having been cooked. It's
like clarified butter, but with more than just butter as
a flavor, or like browned butter but with the bits

(03:57):
taken out. Yeah. Um, it's like coconut oil that came
from a cow and is lactose free and doesn't taste
of coconut. H It's like it's like someone out there
wants you to have nice things. It's like it's like
it's dangerous to go alone. Take this but about butter

(04:20):
um And I feel like I've used that line before,
maybe with a cheese um. But I feel like it
applies here too. Yeah. I think it was a similar
thing in Lintel's tows, like it's like, oh, I'm going
to take care of you. Go at things similar vibe,
similar vibe. Okay, all right, I I again. I do

(04:43):
get so excited every time I get to talk milk science. Um.
And you know, it's for good reasons, because because milk
is this useful food, because it's got fats and proteins
and sugars and water and some nice vitamins and minerals.
But the problem is that lots of bacteria of find
milk to be a useful food too, So if you

(05:04):
don't eat it right away, they will, uh, and that
causes spoilage all flavors and textures. Maybe some of the
microbes in there would make you sick if you consumed them,
and so humans have come up with all kinds of
ways to deal with that and preserve this, this tasty,
nutritious stuff for longer. Modern science has given us a
pasteurization and sterilization. But classically you were looking at trying

(05:28):
to direct the spoilage, and you do this by taking
any number of steps to make the milk an environment
where harmful microbes cannot thrive. You know, they need a
certain pH level, They need water and sugars and proteins. Um.
Often this involves introducing helpful bacteria that won't hurt you.

(05:50):
And also we'll use up some of the resources and
also will acidify the milk. That happens to help you
gather up the stuff that you want in the milk
and get rid of the water. Um. And at that
point you can make stuff like yogurt, or cheese or butter.
All three of those things will stay good longer than milk,
but it's best to keep them cool. And since refrigeration

(06:12):
as we know it has only been around for like
a hundred years, what's next? Well, Uh, you take butter,
which is which is really concentrated milk fat. Okay, like
like milk is like five fat with a little stuff
and a lot of water. Butter is like fat with

(06:32):
a little stuff and a little water. Um with g
you're looking to achieve like n plus fat with a
little stuff and zero point five water or less. So
you heat your butter until those fats reach their boiling point,

(06:55):
which is way above the boiling point of water. Right um. Uh,
The the sugars and the proteins in the butter um
separate out and start cooking in the oil like like
the brown up a little. Um. That's the Mayard reaction
at work. Um. And then you simmer the butter for
a good like fifteen plus minutes, releasing all of that

(07:15):
water as steam as it boils off. Um. And then
you can physically strain out the browned milk solids with
a steve and the resulting oil is g And yeah,
it really is simple to make it home, as long
as you keep an eye on that simmer, don't let
the milk solids burn. But these days you can also
buy pre made its stores. There's even a whole market

(07:37):
out there for gourmet g H flavored with things like
green tea or cumin or apple or smoked salmon or truffle.
I know, right, well, I'm already writing up my mother's Christmas.
Have that all there, Okay? And on On the other end, Uh,

(08:02):
When made commercially, GE is sometimes made straight from cream
instead of butter, So I don't know, you gotta get
a get a whole range of products out there. Yeah,
uh what whatever that range results in, a g is
going to have a melting point of like five degrees fahrenheit.

(08:24):
Oh I didn't, I didn't look up the Celsius translation
of that. It's a little bit above room temperature UM,
which means that g is generally solid but but soft
at room temperature. When it's made with with butter from
grass fed cows, it'll be just golden yellow in color um.
When it's made from cultured butter, it's got just a

(08:46):
very intense butter flavor because the culturing that lactic acid
bacteria process is what gives butter butter flavor. Um. It's
also nutty and rich and and right you have a
buttery um without being creamy or sweet like butter can be.
And it is shelf stable and used as a cooking

(09:09):
oil in all kinds of applications from saute ng too
deep frying, and also as a topping or a dip
for for breads and other foods. M m m m m.
I love this. I have a whole world to explore. Uh, well,
what about the nutrition um. If butter is fat concentrated milk,

(09:30):
ghee is fat concentrated butter um, so so it is
a calorie dense food um high and saturated fats um.
It retains those fat soluble vitamins and minerals, which is
great as a cooking oil. It's nifty because um it
has a smoke point of like all the way up
at like like over four fifty fahrenheit, like like up

(09:50):
to like four eighty eight five fahrenheit or like to
fifty celsius um, which means that you can use it
to cook things at higher temperatures than stuff like butter
without the oil starting to burn. And studies have found
that it produces fewer toxic compounds when heated to those
high temperatures than vegetable oils do, so that's really cool. Uh.

(10:13):
It's generally also safe for people who have UM milk
sensitivities or allergies because usually those those sensitivities are to
the lactose and the casines, which have been removed in
the case of key. Yeah, okay, okay, Well, we do
have some numbers for you. We do. As of the

(10:36):
global industrial production of g was just over six million
tons and growing um. Over half of that, maybe like
six was being produced from cow milk, with buffalo and
cow buffalo mixes making up the rest, and the value
of the market was estimated at forty five point seven

(10:56):
billion dollars as of Yeah. Um uh. This is a
traditional Indian product, and it's important to remember here that
India has the largest dairy industry in the world, and furthermore,
the G production is the largest segment of that market. Ah.

(11:18):
I've read though in a couple of places that around
of the G in India is still made by small,
independent producers using the traditional process. Um wow. Yeah. Also
in that traditional process, it takes about thirty liters of
milk to make one leader of G. Wow. I did

(11:40):
see one statistic that at least one company reported increase
in demand for G during the pandemic. Yeah, which sounds
like it could definitely be involved and a lot of
nostalgic comforting dishes, but just itself. Oh yeah, I'm making

(12:02):
like a heavy nod. Yeah, but I know the feeling
when you're like I just want some yeah, right, Like
sometimes it's that day, You're sometimes that day, and during
the pandemic it was that day a lot. Oh yes.
But there has been a long history of oh yes,

(12:23):
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from a quick break for a
word from our sponsors, and we're back, Thank you. Sponsored yes,
thank you. Okay, So who there's a lot of past

(12:44):
we could have gone down with this one, I will
tell you that. And there there are so many things
where I'm kind of gonna condense it like you might
a G because there's just so much like traditional history
and legends around um and some of it I didn't
feel super confident talking about. So I would love if

(13:07):
listeners I would right in if we miss anything. UM
as always oh yeah, value your input and kind of
you know, low key depend on your inputs. Yes, yes, yes,
keep it coming. Um but okay, originated in India thousands
of years ago, perhaps as early as fift b c E.

(13:29):
Or maybe even as far back as eight thousand years
ago to the end is Valley based on so they
found like archaeological lipid evidence on pottery in that region,
which I just love this. That is the HBO Max series.
I want to see archaeological evidence. Yes, And I wanted
to be so serious like I think this is SKI

(13:54):
I would every week, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
In many ways, G was a solution type of thing
where it was born out of necessity because it was
too hot to store butter in that and that region
for anything longer than a short period of time because
of the heat, and one way to increase the shelf

(14:15):
life was to clarify usually caw yak milk butter um
basically to heat it until the water evaporates and leaving
behind those milk solids. Um. So it was something that
people had to figure out, which I think we talked
about a lot in these in these episodes. Yeah, it's
such a such a smart way of a um. Right,

(14:39):
doing a little bit of that sterilization because you're cooking
it long enough to to to kill off a lot
of the critters that might be in there. And yeah,
also right preserve it for longer. Yeah, I love it.
I mean this early on people were figuring this out.
Um and Yeah. For Millennia and India, recipes have featured
g miss have all and painted as something divine. One

(15:02):
such story goes that the Hindu lord of the creatures
rubbed his hands together to create gee and then he
tossed it into the fire to make offspring. So it's
like the very beginning. Yeah, yeah, and people in India
have long used it as part of a healthy diet.
It was described as an item that was desired by
the gods and Sanskrit writings, Vada cooking was split into

(15:25):
two categories, foods cooked and gee and foods that weren't.
And on top of that, it has long been seen
as medicinal. Yeah, and used to help digestion, to lower
temperature and to help with burn wounds a bunch of
other things too. Um yeah. And as we talked about

(15:45):
in our massalic shy episode, um, there wasn't really a
formalized dairy industry in India until the nineteen hundreds. So
skipping a little bit ahead, um uh. That was starting
with a push from British honists during World War One, um,
leading up all the way through Operation Flood in the
nineteen seventies, which transformed India into the largest dairy producer

(16:11):
in the world. As mentioned above. Um, and this is
all super complicated, uh And right, India is big and multicultural.
But suffice it to say that during the nine hundreds,
the availability of milk for products like ghe really boomed. Yes,
And I guess we should say this is not the

(16:32):
cow episode. This is still not This is still not
the dairy industry in India. Episode No. I just done
butter and types of milk, but still yeah, yeah, yeah, um,
future episodes for us. That's a problem for future US. Exactly.

(16:52):
You're welcome, future US. You're gonna love it. Uh. There
was a shortage of ghee in India when the population
exploded in the nineteen thirties. Um, and then this is
kind of actually going back. But so if we have
g production happening in India, in Europe kind of around

(17:14):
the same time as this was going on, I should
say not around the same time, but folks started using
crankshafts to separate fresh cream from raw milk, but the
methods they used were far more likely to result in butter,
So they don't really have a g history. I think
there was attempts to make it, but they kind of
kept just making butter. What it sound like from what

(17:35):
it sounds like to me. And then the story in
the US has been interesting, to say the least. One
of the first mentions of g or historians think it
was that was being discussed in the US comes from
no less than Edgar Alan Poe and his one work
Mrs Found in a Bottle, which I had never heard of.

(17:57):
I haven't heard that one either. Yeah, that's a manuscript
U m MS found in a bottle. Yeah, I thought
it was mrs. Oh no, no, that's it MS in
this in this instance is the abbreviation for manuscript. We'll see.
I clearly had never heard of it. Um. I should

(18:18):
read it. I should check it out. Yeah. Um. There's
also potential mention of G in an Mark Twain letter
sent to Rudyard Kipling. Uh, and he asked for Kipling
to quote be on hand with a few bottles of G,
for I shall be thirsty. However, most attribute the first
substantial mentioned in the US to a recipe featured in

(18:40):
Goodies Ladies Book from eighteen sixty three. And this was
the most popular magazine during the Civil War. I know,
we've talked about it a few times, um, And a
lot of nineteenth century recipes called for clarified butter. And
then there's an eight children's story that mentioned G. It's
a story that in and tigers being dissolved into gee

(19:02):
and then used to make pancakes. Children's stories can be
so gnarly, I'm telling you. But it's also mentioned in
the nineteen fifty four novel Nectar in a Sieve when
a lot of Indian immigrants arrived in the US in
the early twentieth century. He did gain a bigger foothole here. UM.
New York City's nineteen eleven edition of Grocer's Encyclopedia mentioned

(19:26):
g and I think that was like a usually was like, oh,
something from a different country, let's focus on it type
of publication. UM the first known restaurant serving Indian food
and New York opened in nineteen thirteen, or at least
primarily serving Indian food, opened in nineteen thirteen. UM and
really took and really took off in the US in

(19:48):
the nineteen fifties, when the US government realized that it
had a problem. American dairy farmers were sitting on two
hundred and sixty million pounds of surplus butter. Well, yeah,
a lot. So to keep it from going bad and
to make a profit, of course, they decided it should
be turned into gi and shipped and sold in India,
shift to India, sold in India. They even sent dairy

(20:11):
experts to India to sell the product. One such expert
was Louis H. Bergwald, and while he was in India,
he learned a couple of things about the taste of
the people's there. First, they varied by region very much
that milks varied based on what was prevalent and available,
and he was enthusiastic by these varied tastes. He saw

(20:32):
an opportunity to capitalize, but nothing really came out of
it in the end. Mm hmmm. In a New York
Times article called G Is for Good by R. K. Nadian,
he wrote, G is no doubt clarified butter, but is
also something more, in the same way that wine is
more than the juice of a squeezed grape. Ye is

(20:53):
like a genius born to a dull parent. It takes
the turn, isn't it. I don't think. I don't think.
Oh that is so nine. You can't say that anymore.
Uh wow, yep, you're just like, oh yeah, why why
oh okay um yeah. Indeed, However, in nineteen sixty, with

(21:21):
shifting health trends in the U s. G started to
be seen as unhealthy, something fatty that would clog up
your arteries. That's something we talked about a lot with sugar. Um.
Kind of this campaign around fat being bad and sugar
being fine or m hm. Another. However, worldwide worldwide interest

(21:44):
in GI blew up in the Western world alongside interest
in health foods and the keto diet. For example, it
was an ingredient in the trendy bulletproof coffee. In the
same year, the USD eight revised its guidelines. Time magazine
named he one of the healthiest foods of all time.

(22:06):
Um in the US has gone, it's gone through a
couple of reputation shifts, image shifts. Uh that I oh,
my goodness, I um yeah, it's a lot uh this.
I feel like it's been a second since we've had
a kill Joy corner. And I just I have to

(22:27):
say that it drives me heck and nuts when people
talk about like super foods or say that anything is
like the healthiest food because as we talk about all
the time, like like nutrition is really complicated, our bodies
are really complicated. Like there's no oh, it's yeah, yeah,

(22:51):
there's a lot more to it than that. You can't
just I mean, I know, I know, it's I know
it's a good click bait or whatever to to be like,
but well, and it's just so interesting to me because
there's a part of you that or at least a
part of me that wants to believe like, Okay, this
is good for me, this is bad for me whatever,

(23:11):
But this and like this very quick timeline that I did,
it goes from being like this is so unhealthy, don't
eat this. Two it is the healthiest thing, and like
not that long of a time, within within actually within
like my lifetime. It is something. Always take those kinds

(23:34):
of headlines with a grain of salt. Um, but I
do find it interesting, are interesting, and sometimes a little
frightening how quickly we can shift on health around food um,
thanks largely to the to the marketing and lobbying of
Big Sugar for example, Big Sugar for example. Yeah, but

(23:59):
I two silver line this one. I'm very excited to
to explore the world of key uh in more detail,
and I think that I'm going to have a lot
of lovely things come out of it. Yeah. Yeah, me too.
I'm thinking about that package of Better that I just
bought last week that is sitting in my fridge and

(24:21):
going like hm hmmm mmm, options. Options. Well, I think
that's what we have to say about for now. I
think it is. We do have some listener mail for you, though,
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from one more quick break for
a word, from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes,

(24:49):
thank you, and we're back with listen Clarified. There's kind
of a sinking in was clarified, you know, settling in
with yourself. Yeah, maybe I'm thinking too deeply about this,
like like like like the milk solids settle out of

(25:10):
the butter. Yeah, that was kind of a calming one. Yeah. Um,
before we get into listener mail, I did want to
shout out my friend Marissa who's listened to the show. Um.
She we recently hung out and she made me tadig,
which we talked about in a listener mail after our

(25:32):
rice Cooker episode because it's um got the crisp rice
on the bottom. It's a Persian dish and they kind
of adapted rice cookers to be able to make it
in that region. She made it for me, uh, and
I hope she's not mad. I discussed this with her,
but I don't know if she realized that I was serious.

(25:53):
So she when she was getting the ingredients of the recipe,
she wanted one random tortilla and I couldn't figure it
out out. Um, but that's kind of her and her
family's trick of getting the crisp bottom as they put
a tortilla and it crisp up around the rice and
you flip it. Um. So it's like a way of

(26:13):
preserving I don't want to say, like cheating, but it's
like a you know, I'm going to make sure that
you get this crisp bottom. And it was delicious. I
loved it. She was telling me about everybody's strong opinions
about it, and I was just like, this is so cool.
I'm kind of seeing something we talked about play out.
But um, it was cool. I I I because I

(26:34):
could not figure out, for the life of me what
that tortilla was. More, you're like one random tortilla, like
what like in this Persian But I love that. I
kind of love that. That's also something we talked about
a lot, is how do you adapt based on what's
available near you time or cooking constraints or whatever. Um,

(26:57):
and these sort of cultures kind of intermingling and making that.
I don't know. I was just kind of endured, but
you know, absolutely, can I can? I can I actually
tell tell my Persian race story too. Yeah. Annie, you've
heard this one, but but uh, the rest of you,
all humans probably have not so shortly after we did

(27:19):
that rice cooker episode, Um, I clogged my kitchen sink terribly.
Um not like on purpose, like, but but I was
I was trying to put I had like kind of
a lot of takeout rice in my fridge that had
gone off, and like I was trying to put it
down the garbage disposal, and rice, like like coffee grounds,
when it gets a little bit wet, it can just

(27:40):
really really non Newtonian lee lock up into an absolute blockage.
And so this had happened, and I called a plumber
and uh uh and this very nice older Iranian gentleman
comes to my house and uh and you know, and
we're and and we're chatting. He's, you know, trying to

(28:00):
make friends with my cat and uh and he gets
the clog out and like all of this rice comes
out and he looks at me and he's like, that's
that's a lot of rice. Do you do you eat
that much rice? Where are you from? And I was
like South Florida. I It's like, but yeah, we do

(28:21):
eat a lot of rice in this household. And he
like looks back at the race and looks back at me,
and he's like this isn't very good quality rice. You
need to be eating better rice. What you need to do?
And he proceeds to tell me about this Persian market
that up in the Vinings area. He's like, you need
to go to this Persian market. They have the best

(28:41):
rice there, um. And I was like, I was like,
thank you, I've I've heard, I've heard about this, this dish,
the tadig with the with the crisp on the bottom.
And his face just lights up and he's like, how
do you know about that? And I'm like, I'm not
going to explain a podcast to you right now, sir,
but I but yeah, I read about it and it

(29:03):
sounds really good and it was just the one. It's
a wonderful moment between these, you know, two humans who
otherwise might not have hung out. And I I love that.
Oh my gosh, that's so sweet, and I should mention
like my friend Marissa, who has family, she has history
from she has family from iran Um. She also did

(29:28):
this because I was going to get hurt the ingredients
and she was making it. Um. She said, I'm getting
the rice because I'm very particular fair no aces so good,
so I know, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, it was.
It was so delicious. Thank you for Rissa. Oh yes,
thank you, Yes you did good to have it. But yes,

(29:50):
but yeah, I mean thank you thank you for for
providing the opportunity for the story. Yeah, because those I
love that, I really do. Um, all right to the listener, man, Okay,
I also love this, um, Melissa wrote, good morning, I
just listened to the sentimental Lintel episode and my heart
is bursting with pride. I am Andrew's mom, Melissa, the

(30:12):
purveyor of obviously sentimental holiday treats, including the now infamous
Ranch Oyster crackers. So we read Andrew's recipe and story
about these crackers in that episode. Anyway, all right, um,
Melissa continues, he is correct that I make these every
year around the holidays, but also when we have large

(30:32):
get togethers, including Andrew's wedding weekend, we had a huge
rash of these and other savory treats in large stars
out by the pool for all the guests to enjoy.
I love that something as simple as this has made
such a big impact on my family and helped to
win over our very sweet daughter in law. Here's the
recipe if you feel inclined whis together three tablespoon's ranch

(30:55):
dressing mix, one packet, one teaspoon lemon pepper, one half
to one teaspoon garlic salt or one fourth teaspoon of
the powder, one to two teaspoons dry dill, one cup
canola toss with three bags oyster crackers about sixty announces
each until most of the oil is absorbed. You can
bake on baking sheets at two fifty for fifteen to

(31:17):
twenty minutes until golden. If you like them extra crispy,
but I skip this step, you can also sobstitute some
of the crackers for goldfish crackers if you want to
make it a little more fun. Enjoy many blessings from Indiana.
If you ever want to do a podcast about sugar
cream pie, I am your girl. Another one of Andrew's favorites.
Oh oh, thank you for the rest of Thank you,

(31:41):
thank you, thank you. I want to try it so badly,
um and I do I mean this again? Is I
love this? I love that it's kind of this simple thing,
but people bonded over it, people look forward to it,
and it's bought all of it, balled, all of us together.
Oh and sugar cream pie I is is on the list. Um, yes,

(32:05):
I don't know that I know what that is, but
that's the fun of it. Or that's the fun of it.
Oh heck um. Christine wrote, I very recently found your podcast,
and I think it's going to be great binge listening.
Seeing as you are proudly nerdy enough to talk about

(32:26):
dungeons and dragons, You'll probably know what I mean when
I say I'm in the Society for Creative Anachronism. I
am greatly interested in the foods and cooking of medieval
Europe and in food history in general. I'm also trying
to finish a History Honors thesis on the culinary and
social history of puddings in medieval and early modern England.
More on this later this morning, I listened to the

(32:47):
episode on montels. I don't like mushy lentils, which may
be an autism thing, or it may be because this
is one of the many foods destroyed by my nineteen
eighties Australian cookery. However, I do love French style TWI lentils.
You don't find many recipes for lentils in medieval Europe,
probably because of their association with peasant food to Renaissance Italians. U.

(33:09):
I'm not going to say their names. Both considered lentils
utterly disgusting and not fit for human consumption, and one
of them was the closest thing you'll find too a
vegetarian at the time. However, there's a recipe I adapted
from sixteenth century Germany that's been well received, where the
lentils are cooked in a spiced broth with finely minced onions, wine, vinegar, sugar,

(33:29):
and raisins. The spices, sugar, and raisins would have made
this far too costly to be considered peasant food. This
dish probably evolved from a class of mean joke dishes
where typical peasant food was dressed up with extremely expensive
ingredients to show the gulf between rich and poor. Let's
just say rush limbaugh would have fitted right into the

(33:50):
medieval sense of humor. And this brings us to English puddings.
I firmly believe pudding derives from the Germanic of Ya,
the Anglo Saxons, rather than from the French. After the
Norman conquest, Anglo Saxon English became the language of the
subjugated peasant class. Anything associated with peasants like farming and

(34:11):
livestock retained the Anglo Saxon word, whilst most culinary terms
became French. Puddings were firmly associated with poor people, particularly
in urban areas, up to the fifteenth century. And we're
typically made of awful uh, the bits of the animal
you only eat if you're desperate. But in the fifteenth
century you start to find recipes for puddings, typically filled

(34:33):
with sugar, spices, dried fruits, almonds and rice, all the
things poor people couldn't afford. There's even one recipe collection
that contains a recipe called garbage, which is all the
entrails of a chicken cooked in a sweet, spiced broth. However,
by the sixteenth century puddings had become gourmet. No doubt

(34:55):
Henry the Eighth had something to do with this. The
man loved his food, and he clearly loved his puddings.
His personal pantry regularly made payments to a woman to
make him puddings, and she was given a pension when
he died. He also gave costly gifts to visitors and
courtiers who presented him with puddings. Uh. Presumably Henry's puddings
contained only the best ingredients, though in the sixteenth century

(35:17):
awful became very fashionable and expensive. I do wonder if
the tutor equivalent of Marco Pierre White declared that being
able to prepare awful well was the mark of a
great cook. But even while puddings were the height of
culinary fashion, the humble origins of puddings stuck around in reminders. Uh.
Pudding was a common insult of Shakespeare's Um. It's still

(35:40):
a derogatory term used for overweight people, and a putting
head occasionally crops up to describe someone stupid. Uh. Putting Lane,
where the Great Fire of London started, got its name
because it was the root the market laborers took to
dump all the unsold meat and animal bits that hadn't
sold into the Thames um. This material was called pudding,

(36:02):
one of the many reasons no one drawing from the
river if they could help it. By the eighteenth century,
pudding had taken on its typical British meaning, today another
word for dessert, but associated more with every day or
family meals rather than something served to impress. In cookbooks
from this period, you'll tend to find chapters for puddings
which are sweet but easy to make, um with more technical,

(36:25):
showy sugar recipes in a different desserts chapter. This division
coincided with sugar becoming cheaper because of slave plantations. Sugar
dishes requiring long or complex preparation got the fancy title
of dessert, while easier dishes got called puddings. Savory puddings
such as Yorkshire pudding probably got their name through association

(36:48):
with a suet or dripping uh. The earliest version of
Yorkshire pudding was actually a batter poured into the bottom
of roasting trade to collect the meat juices, while there
are other regionals savory puddings which are made with suett.
I have no idea how pudding became associated with a
sweet semi st starch custard. In the United States, however,

(37:11):
there is a very popular English dish first mentioned in
the thirteenth century and is probably earlier um called m
m aduan and a M I d O U n
no idea how to pronounce that um, where wheat starch
is combined with sweetened almond milk and gradually thickened. And
this was still reasonably popular when Alfred Bird made it

(37:32):
commercially available in the nineteenth century as custard. Custard is
also a medieval dish, though it combines egg yolks with
cream and is usually baked, often in a pie crust. Well,
that's enough rambling for me for now. I will no
doubt send further emails as I work through your back catalog.
You are free to ignore them if necessary. Never we

(37:54):
look forward to them. Oh, yeah, that is so delightful.
I love that you have an academic pudding specialty. I
do too. This is amazing the detail, the context, all
the history and all of it about putting. It's really
like genuinely thish. This is so cool. Yeah, and see

(38:16):
and see this is the kind of stuff like like
like we were talking about, like you said earlier, Annie,
like like we we are not experts. We do not
pretend to be experts. Some of y'all out there are
and that is awesome. We are just we are just
fans of food and of information about it, and so
you know, we're just yes, yes, I mean, any any

(38:41):
time any of y'all who are experts takes the time
to share this with us, so cool, it is so appreciated.
And yes, we like legitimately nerd out about it. So
thank you, thank you, and that's fascinating. We pudding is
going to be a very interesting episode, but keep this

(39:03):
in mind. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Thanks to both of
those listeners for writing in. If you would like to
write to us, that you can. Our email is hello
at saborpod dot com. We're also on social media. You
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is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts in
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(39:25):
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Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope
that lots more good things are coming your way.