On 9/1/2012 7:36 AM, George M. Middius wrote:
> dsi1 wrote:
>
>> Ghee's ability to keep was probably important before there was
>> refrigeration - probably not so important these days. OTOH, maybe a lot
>> of the poor folks don't have refrigeration. Beats me. OTOH, I can't
>> imagine that ghee has much of an advantage over plain old vegetable oil.
>
> I think the refrigeration angle is a very good guess. All this fuss
> about frying in clarified butter is just plain foolish these days. You
> can always finish a dish with a little fresh butter. That gives you
> much better butter flavor than any amount of frying in the clarified
> stuff.
>
>

Refrigeration was certainly a game changer. People used to spend a lot
of time preserving food. OTOH, the search for new sources of spices
pretty much drove the exploration of the new world. OTOH, I guess we
still spend a lot of time and effort preserving food - we just let other
people do that for us.