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Comment by shortsightedsid | Hacker News Reader

The article is definitely Eurocentric and skips South-East Asia and India. Milk, Butter, Ghee and Yogurt have been part of Indian culture from the start. E.g. references in the Vedas central to various rituals, Lord Krishna loving butter as a child, etc..

What I found really interesting is the premise that the article makes about spoilage. If dairy spoils in the warmer Mediterranean causing the inhabitants to find it unappealing, then why is it that the people living in hotter climate of India found dairy to be integral to their diet? Is it because because of Ghee which has a longer shelf life?

And Yogurt too - even today - integral to any number of Indian households.

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Am from Indian subcontinent. Butter isn't exactly that popular where I'm from (Bangladesh). Milk is usually collected at dawn and consumed in liquid form before the day is over, no need to store anything.

I'm looking briefly at the history of Indian cheesemaking. Seems like rennet wasn't used, but instead things like lemon juice. Paneer seems to be the first word that comes up, consistently along with a few other varities. Looks pretty tasty :P

Paneer is excellent, but in all my experience tends to get treated more like chicken: as a raw material which you will cook (by frying or simmering, etc.) and add seasoning to. I've never seen it simply sliced and served on a cracker, as you might with Western cheeses.

Definitely seek out and try paneer, though. Saag paneer is one of my favorites: chunks of paneer in stewed mustard greens.

Probably butter isn't as common where you're from, but ghee is. Ghee really made butter more viable by increasing it's shelf life, and was a bit of a technological achievement of food science.

I think yogurt is an exception here because it ferments quickly and doesn’t necessarily need refrigeration. A number of the Indian families I know will make yogurt every day. I suppose you could make a similar argument that butter could be made daily in small batches, but the labor involved in butter making is orders of magnitude greater.

Ghee doesn’t spoil without refrigeration like butter does, which is why it has been popular in India.

Perhaps it's just my cooler climate (UK), but (unclarified) butter lasts ages unrefrigerated. Far far longer than it takes me, alone, to consume it.

It's not the first time I'm hearing this at all, so I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand.

It's our climate.

During the really hot spells we had this year our butter melted at least partially when not kept in the fridge. The rest of the year we can keep butter out of the fridge. If it was consistently 5-10 degrees hotter that just wouldn't be an option really, at a minimum we'd need a cold pantry. I can see solid butter being way more effort to keep than it is worth.

What is a normal indoor temperature there? In summer most have their AC keep the house below 27 here. We are a fan of 22 in my house but that is considered a bit wasteful. In winter we try to keep it above 18 unless it gets really cold. This last winter it got down to 8 inside.

I'd say most people probably have their heating set to 21 to 22, which for most of the year is more than the external temperature (hence why so few houses here have AC).

Thats sounds like heaven. Outside we swung from -18 to 45 this year.

Oh sure, but melting isn't spoiling. It'll melt here sometimes too, but harden back up overnight (or in the fridge) and it's fine.

I thought we were talking about it actually spoiling, going off, growing mould or whatever. If anything ghee is worse in terms of melting isn't it? Here in the UK it's typically liquid (sold in cans) at room temperature, and will only solidify in the fridge. (As a separate point that's sort of interesting taken together with its higher smoke point than butter that hasn't been clarified. To a non-chemist such as me anyway.)

Your butter is probably modern factory made kind, which is pasteurized. It can last much longer than "natural" butters of old.

Same applies to milk. My parents used to boil milk up until 20 years ago, mostly because they grew up in households with cows and they boiled milk to kill bacteria. It took me years of showing them the label "Does not need to be boiled" to get them to drop the habit.

Ah yes, good point. I assume modern (commercial) ghee is too, but that certainly makes preservation origins make more sense. Thanks.

Because ghee manufacturing process involves boiling water out of the butter, it is rather irrelevant whether the milk has been initially pasteurized.

Actually it would be exactly that — when it mentions butter it’s highly unlikely that it is referring to clarified butter.

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