Olive Oil, Butter, and What Else?
August 26, 2023 5:10 AM
Recently saw a map where they had divided Europe into butter Europe and olive oil Europe. If this had been a map of the world, what other oils would be on there? I’m guessing maybe sesame in parts of Asia, palm in some parts, perhaps some kind of whale blubber in the Arctic? Any others?
I think it's important to distinguish palm fruit oil from palm kernel oil. Same palm, both are traditional west and central African foods, but the latter is now also a hugely destructive plantation-grown industrial crop (and what you find in all kinds of processed foods, e.g. Nutella, because it's more saturated and resistant to rancidity than virtually any other nonhydrogenated plant oil). More history here. You can get red palm oil (palm fruit oil) in the US, but you pretty much have to go to a store that specialize in African products.
Also, while sesame oil, especially cold pressed, can be used as a primary cooking oil, in east Asia it's much more likely to be pressed from toasted seeds and added for flavoring, usually after cooking, to a dish that was cooked in another oil or fat. I'm not super well informed but I think cooking with sesame oil is more common in south India and the Middle East.
posted by pullayup at 5:31 AM on August 26, 2023
Also, while sesame oil, especially cold pressed, can be used as a primary cooking oil, in east Asia it's much more likely to be pressed from toasted seeds and added for flavoring, usually after cooking, to a dish that was cooked in another oil or fat. I'm not super well informed but I think cooking with sesame oil is more common in south India and the Middle East.
posted by pullayup at 5:31 AM on August 26, 2023
Although it is a butter derivative, Ghee should be on your list for India.
posted by mmascolino at 5:37 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by mmascolino at 5:37 AM on August 26, 2023
For the US, in terms of sheer quantity of use, it would largely be a mix of corn, canola, and vegetable oils. Olive oil, too, though not nearly in the volume of the other three. Peanut oil is there, but largely for frying.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:41 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by Thorzdad at 5:41 AM on August 26, 2023
Pork fat for Asian cooking. "Lard has long been an important ingredient in Asian cooking. Besides being used in everyday savory dishes like stir-fries and noodle soups, when it comes to Asian sweets like pancakes and pastries, lard is irreplaceable."
posted by ewok_academy at 5:50 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by ewok_academy at 5:50 AM on August 26, 2023
I think that in a huge part of Northern, and probably also Eastern Europe, different types of animal fat were at least as important as butter until the early 20th century. Butter was a luxury food until modern dairy production and refrigeration became commonplace, and even for a good while after that because of habits.
For instance smørrebrød, the Danish name for open sandwiches, which means butter-bread, was originally fedtebrød, lard-bread for most people.
But it wasn't just lard, it was also duck-fat, goose-fat, schmalz and tallow. Heck, I still have both lard, schmalz and duck-fat in my fridge most of the time.
posted by mumimor at 6:00 AM on August 26, 2023
For instance smørrebrød, the Danish name for open sandwiches, which means butter-bread, was originally fedtebrød, lard-bread for most people.
But it wasn't just lard, it was also duck-fat, goose-fat, schmalz and tallow. Heck, I still have both lard, schmalz and duck-fat in my fridge most of the time.
posted by mumimor at 6:00 AM on August 26, 2023
There was a previous version of this map showing sour cream across all the Slavic countries. Not for frying with of course!
posted by quacks like a duck at 6:00 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by quacks like a duck at 6:00 AM on August 26, 2023
Here's a recipe for lardy cake , a throwback to the time when animal fat was cheaper than butter in England.
You'd also find poor families giving their kids "bread and dripping" for breakfast or after school, "dripping" being the fat left over from a roast.
posted by quacks like a duck at 6:07 AM on August 26, 2023
You'd also find poor families giving their kids "bread and dripping" for breakfast or after school, "dripping" being the fat left over from a roast.
posted by quacks like a duck at 6:07 AM on August 26, 2023
Animal fat in Australia is not even that much of a throwback, my mother grew up eating lard, dripping et el and she was born in 1950.
posted by deadwax at 6:16 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by deadwax at 6:16 AM on August 26, 2023
Schmaltz has traditionally been used in Jewish communities as a butter alternative not only due to expense but because butter can’t be mixed with meat, kosher-wise. (And lard is right out..)
posted by staggernation at 6:19 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by staggernation at 6:19 AM on August 26, 2023
Schmaltz has traditionally been used in Jewish communities as a butter alternative not only due to expense but because butter can’t be mixed with meat, kosher-wise. (And lard is right out..)
Exactly! So the map should have a huge belt of schmalz (and lard for non-Jews) running north-west to south-east through Europe, probably striped with sunflower oil.
posted by mumimor at 6:32 AM on August 26, 2023
Exactly! So the map should have a huge belt of schmalz (and lard for non-Jews) running north-west to south-east through Europe, probably striped with sunflower oil.
posted by mumimor at 6:32 AM on August 26, 2023
Mustard oil in parts of India, rapeseed oil in China (which are all part of the same spectrum as canola oil, with varying levels of erucic acid). Rice bran oil in large chunks of East, South, and Southeast Asia.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 7:15 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by McCoy Pauley at 7:15 AM on August 26, 2023
It would be interesting to see a map of the world showing the traditionally preferred carbohydrate in each area—corn, wheat, rice, etc. It might be possible to do something similar with domesticated animals, although I suspect there'd be more variation.
posted by adamrice at 8:01 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by adamrice at 8:01 AM on August 26, 2023
This appears to be a map showing traditional usage. Finland in particular made a concerted effort to get people to use a lot more oils instead of butter beginning in the 1970s and, using that and other interventions, greatly reduced cardiovascular disease.
So considering that, before the 70s in the US, at least in the midwest and south, you’d have a lot of pork lard and bacon fat (not among Jewish people, of course, but others more knowledgeable have brought that up). I saw this a lot in my own family. My relatives that lived in the country rendered lard when they slaughtered pigs. In my suburban childhood home, bacon fat was always saved and used for frying. Hard to believe now, but I grew up eating hot dogs fried in bacon fat. My small-town relatives fried eggs in lard. Oils started getting pushed for health reasons in the 70s.
And just remembered I have a 1920s cookbook put out by the Crisco company and that was being advertised as easier to digest and better for you than lard. My own family never used it though. So considering all that, your map for the US would be complicated.
posted by FencingGal at 8:09 AM on August 26, 2023
So considering that, before the 70s in the US, at least in the midwest and south, you’d have a lot of pork lard and bacon fat (not among Jewish people, of course, but others more knowledgeable have brought that up). I saw this a lot in my own family. My relatives that lived in the country rendered lard when they slaughtered pigs. In my suburban childhood home, bacon fat was always saved and used for frying. Hard to believe now, but I grew up eating hot dogs fried in bacon fat. My small-town relatives fried eggs in lard. Oils started getting pushed for health reasons in the 70s.
And just remembered I have a 1920s cookbook put out by the Crisco company and that was being advertised as easier to digest and better for you than lard. My own family never used it though. So considering all that, your map for the US would be complicated.
posted by FencingGal at 8:09 AM on August 26, 2023
Although it is a butter derivative, Ghee should be on your list for India.
Ghee is generally used as a table condiment or garnish and not generally used as a cooking oil in India, with a couple of notable exceptions: desserts are often fried in ghee, and occasionally some other specialties fry with it.
Otherwise: Bengal uses mustard oil, Kerala uses coconut oil, and most of India uses neutral vegetable oil from peanuts, sunflower, canola etc, same as in the US.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:39 AM on August 26, 2023
Ghee is generally used as a table condiment or garnish and not generally used as a cooking oil in India, with a couple of notable exceptions: desserts are often fried in ghee, and occasionally some other specialties fry with it.
Otherwise: Bengal uses mustard oil, Kerala uses coconut oil, and most of India uses neutral vegetable oil from peanuts, sunflower, canola etc, same as in the US.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:39 AM on August 26, 2023
Pork fat for Asian cooking
There's no such thing as "Asian cooking". Certainly pork fat does get used in some Chinese dishes but it's not the most common frying oil even in China, is it?
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:44 AM on August 26, 2023
There's no such thing as "Asian cooking". Certainly pork fat does get used in some Chinese dishes but it's not the most common frying oil even in China, is it?
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:44 AM on August 26, 2023
To be exact, "canola" is an bred version of rapeseed plant made in Canada (Can-ola, or Canada Oil) to decrease the acid level so it doesn't take bitter. Europeans had rapeseed plant for a long time, but they don't usually cook with the oil because it's bitter. Rapeseed oil was used as lamp oil until petroleum derived oil took over.
As for Asian cooking, sesame oil is only used for finishing, and lard is generally only used in some pastry stuff, not as general cooking oil. But the idea of dividing up cuisine like that is an intriguing taxonomical distinction, but I doubt it would be useful when it's more often "whatever we can get our hands on the cheapest". :D
posted by kschang at 9:05 AM on August 26, 2023
As for Asian cooking, sesame oil is only used for finishing, and lard is generally only used in some pastry stuff, not as general cooking oil. But the idea of dividing up cuisine like that is an intriguing taxonomical distinction, but I doubt it would be useful when it's more often "whatever we can get our hands on the cheapest". :D
posted by kschang at 9:05 AM on August 26, 2023
There has been an interesting argument made that the butter/oil divide in Europe is a key piece of information for understanding the causes of the Reformation.
When there was a religious fast day, it was forbidden to eat lard or butter, but you could still eat vegetable oils. But vegetable oils were grown in the south, so in the north they ended up being an expensive import. There were very nice profits to be made if you lived down where the olive trees grew, and if you had any influence with any of the powers that be in the church, you encouraged them to declare more days fast days - not just Lent and Friday, but Wednesday and various days of atonement.
Meanwhile the cultures in more northern climates considered food made with butter, suet or tallow and lard to be important traditions, so not only did they resent the proscriptions that ruined their traditional events, gifts and celebrations, they resented far more the practice of Simony - where you could eat butter and other animal fats if you paid some churchman money for an Indulgence. It was quite a racket for the church - not only did you get to demand a tithe of their produce, but you got to forbid them from eating any calorie rich food they could produce themselves unless they paid you off. By the time the Reformation exploded huge sums had been paid to the church or its officers, just so that people could be forgiven for the sin of eating the only food they had available.
This is why Protestant depictions of Catholic clergy depicted them as being fat, and why a common revenge fantasy among Protestants was to lard the priests as a way of killing them, the way a Butterball turkey is larded with vegetable fat.
Also worth noting, butter needs to be clarified into ghee to keep it from spoiling in hot southern climes, but in more northern ones, salting the butter, storing it in crocks in underground springs, and making cultured butter all helped to preserve it quite well. Most of the year you could just use fresh butter, unlike olives which get picked and pressed all at once. After all the only time you couldn't get butter easily was when the cows had dried up.
A cow does best when it stops nursing for a few weeks during the cycle of getting pregnant and starting to nurse again - and the common and easiest practice was to only discontinue milking the cow through the winter, when stored butter kept beautifully, and you had fat from slaughtered animals to tide you over. Then the birth of her calf in spring could start the cycle again. But often the minimum 40 days when a cow was not milked was timed to coincide with the early spring - you guessed it, during Lent. It was the producers of olives that had to be concerned with keeping their product from going rancid, because they didn't press oil ten months of the year and keep it in steady production.
Finally, it's worth noting that the Jewish custom of using schmaltz was likely influenced by their social precarity. Ordinarily chicken was a more expensive meat than pork or beef. (This is why Henry IV/Herbert Hoover's description of prosperity was "A chicken in every pot." If you could afford to eat chicken once a week, you were considered comfortably off. "Chicken every Sunday" is another old description of a comfortable life.) Nobody who could keep household well would slaughter a laying hen. Yet it wasn't a hardship to keep your capons until you had a special occasion, or a buyer willing to pay.
In contract when you slaughtered a cow you ended up with a glut of meat which you had to dispose of quickly. This is why beef was relatively cheap. You didn't have any way to hold out for a higher price because next week you'd be begging to give it away. In a small community large animal slaughtering could be staggered, one animal every week or so, with the owner getting the help they likely needed with the heavy carcass, and the meat being shared between all the households that were participating.
But you had to let all the neighbours know you were slaughtering... and for a Jewish minority in a hostile neighbourhood, perhaps you ran the serious risk of having Gentile neighbours confiscating the meat and fat that had taken you months to raise. It was much easier to hide your chickens than your cattle, or to get some replacements if you did get "taxed" or robbed. Everybody kept chickens, even poor widows, so keeping chickens or ducks or geese meant you could still keep a low profile and not be thought of as owning undeserved wealth.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:09 AM on August 26, 2023
When there was a religious fast day, it was forbidden to eat lard or butter, but you could still eat vegetable oils. But vegetable oils were grown in the south, so in the north they ended up being an expensive import. There were very nice profits to be made if you lived down where the olive trees grew, and if you had any influence with any of the powers that be in the church, you encouraged them to declare more days fast days - not just Lent and Friday, but Wednesday and various days of atonement.
Meanwhile the cultures in more northern climates considered food made with butter, suet or tallow and lard to be important traditions, so not only did they resent the proscriptions that ruined their traditional events, gifts and celebrations, they resented far more the practice of Simony - where you could eat butter and other animal fats if you paid some churchman money for an Indulgence. It was quite a racket for the church - not only did you get to demand a tithe of their produce, but you got to forbid them from eating any calorie rich food they could produce themselves unless they paid you off. By the time the Reformation exploded huge sums had been paid to the church or its officers, just so that people could be forgiven for the sin of eating the only food they had available.
This is why Protestant depictions of Catholic clergy depicted them as being fat, and why a common revenge fantasy among Protestants was to lard the priests as a way of killing them, the way a Butterball turkey is larded with vegetable fat.
Also worth noting, butter needs to be clarified into ghee to keep it from spoiling in hot southern climes, but in more northern ones, salting the butter, storing it in crocks in underground springs, and making cultured butter all helped to preserve it quite well. Most of the year you could just use fresh butter, unlike olives which get picked and pressed all at once. After all the only time you couldn't get butter easily was when the cows had dried up.
A cow does best when it stops nursing for a few weeks during the cycle of getting pregnant and starting to nurse again - and the common and easiest practice was to only discontinue milking the cow through the winter, when stored butter kept beautifully, and you had fat from slaughtered animals to tide you over. Then the birth of her calf in spring could start the cycle again. But often the minimum 40 days when a cow was not milked was timed to coincide with the early spring - you guessed it, during Lent. It was the producers of olives that had to be concerned with keeping their product from going rancid, because they didn't press oil ten months of the year and keep it in steady production.
Finally, it's worth noting that the Jewish custom of using schmaltz was likely influenced by their social precarity. Ordinarily chicken was a more expensive meat than pork or beef. (This is why Henry IV/Herbert Hoover's description of prosperity was "A chicken in every pot." If you could afford to eat chicken once a week, you were considered comfortably off. "Chicken every Sunday" is another old description of a comfortable life.) Nobody who could keep household well would slaughter a laying hen. Yet it wasn't a hardship to keep your capons until you had a special occasion, or a buyer willing to pay.
In contract when you slaughtered a cow you ended up with a glut of meat which you had to dispose of quickly. This is why beef was relatively cheap. You didn't have any way to hold out for a higher price because next week you'd be begging to give it away. In a small community large animal slaughtering could be staggered, one animal every week or so, with the owner getting the help they likely needed with the heavy carcass, and the meat being shared between all the households that were participating.
But you had to let all the neighbours know you were slaughtering... and for a Jewish minority in a hostile neighbourhood, perhaps you ran the serious risk of having Gentile neighbours confiscating the meat and fat that had taken you months to raise. It was much easier to hide your chickens than your cattle, or to get some replacements if you did get "taxed" or robbed. Everybody kept chickens, even poor widows, so keeping chickens or ducks or geese meant you could still keep a low profile and not be thought of as owning undeserved wealth.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:09 AM on August 26, 2023
I think it’s North India that cooks with ghee and South India that garnishes with it, broadly speaking, although I could be wrong.
posted by lokta at 10:46 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by lokta at 10:46 AM on August 26, 2023
Eulachon/Oolichan, aka candlefish, oil for parts of what is now California, Oregon, Washington, BC, the Yukon and Alaska. The oil was traded inland, even as far as the eastern side of the Rockies.
Lard in much of Latin America post-Columbian exchange, though tallow was more prominent in some parts (e.g. Argentina).
Sunflower oil in parts of North America and later in eastern Europe.
Some cultures did not have any significant cooking oils, like the Mexica, for example.
posted by ssg at 11:23 AM on August 26, 2023
Lard in much of Latin America post-Columbian exchange, though tallow was more prominent in some parts (e.g. Argentina).
Sunflower oil in parts of North America and later in eastern Europe.
Some cultures did not have any significant cooking oils, like the Mexica, for example.
posted by ssg at 11:23 AM on August 26, 2023
Pemmican is a traditional North American food that was usually made from the fat of large game animals - bison, bear or moose, but also sometimes with fish oil from salmon. Often the fat was rendered from marrow bones. The word pemmican comes from the Cree word ᐱᒦᐦᑳᓐ (pimîhkân), which is derived from the word ᐱᒥᕀ (pimî), "fat, grease". There was dried meat in it and maybe berries, but the main ingredient was fat.
Pemmican is still made in some communities, but now it is also made from beef and tallow as well as from game.
I first heard about pemmican as being a kind of high calorie preserved food suitable for packing with you on trips, but I suspect it was prepared in the fall and eaten in the late winter and spring through midsummer, when game animals are very lean. Fall is when you hunt bears as they are full of fat, and easy to find while they are foraging because they are so intent on getting the calories they need for hibernation. But a bear killed in the spring is a sorry thing; it has metabolised all the fat it stored in its body during the winter and it can't find any high calorie foods either.
It's not easy to get enough fat in the bush. Living off the land can be really hard. A diet of rabbit, lake fish, roots and berries and wild rice will eventually cause you to waste away because there's not enough fat in it. There are several accounts of western explorers getting really weak and sickly until someone from the first nations realised why they were sickening and helped them out by bringing them fat from their winter supplies. The westerners, who were eating full meals, hadn't actually realised that they were starving to death.
People who get stranded somewhere in the Canadian bush sometimes calculate that they can either walk three or four days steadily to get to civilization, or stay put on a lake where they can catch fish and sit tight and wait for people to find them. But if there is a clear trail, that's the wrong decision. Lake fish is so lean that, in terms of calories it's not all that much better than living on greens. A well nourished person with good boots can walk for three or four days with nothing to eat. But by the time the stranded people realise that they may not be found in time, they have become too weak to walk out.
You can, however, do very well indeed on ocean fish. There is enough oil in them to keep you well nourished. Anywhere on the sea coast in North American there was traditionally plenty of fish to supply your need for fat. Pemmican was the traditional source of grease inland.
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:49 AM on August 26, 2023
Pemmican is still made in some communities, but now it is also made from beef and tallow as well as from game.
I first heard about pemmican as being a kind of high calorie preserved food suitable for packing with you on trips, but I suspect it was prepared in the fall and eaten in the late winter and spring through midsummer, when game animals are very lean. Fall is when you hunt bears as they are full of fat, and easy to find while they are foraging because they are so intent on getting the calories they need for hibernation. But a bear killed in the spring is a sorry thing; it has metabolised all the fat it stored in its body during the winter and it can't find any high calorie foods either.
It's not easy to get enough fat in the bush. Living off the land can be really hard. A diet of rabbit, lake fish, roots and berries and wild rice will eventually cause you to waste away because there's not enough fat in it. There are several accounts of western explorers getting really weak and sickly until someone from the first nations realised why they were sickening and helped them out by bringing them fat from their winter supplies. The westerners, who were eating full meals, hadn't actually realised that they were starving to death.
People who get stranded somewhere in the Canadian bush sometimes calculate that they can either walk three or four days steadily to get to civilization, or stay put on a lake where they can catch fish and sit tight and wait for people to find them. But if there is a clear trail, that's the wrong decision. Lake fish is so lean that, in terms of calories it's not all that much better than living on greens. A well nourished person with good boots can walk for three or four days with nothing to eat. But by the time the stranded people realise that they may not be found in time, they have become too weak to walk out.
You can, however, do very well indeed on ocean fish. There is enough oil in them to keep you well nourished. Anywhere on the sea coast in North American there was traditionally plenty of fish to supply your need for fat. Pemmican was the traditional source of grease inland.
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:49 AM on August 26, 2023
Some cultures did not have any significant cooking oils, like the Mexica, for example.
posted by ssg
How did they get enough calories and dietary fat then? Was it from the corn oil in the grain, or from things like avocados and fish that they didn't render into pure oil?
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:52 AM on August 26, 2023
posted by ssg
How did they get enough calories and dietary fat then? Was it from the corn oil in the grain, or from things like avocados and fish that they didn't render into pure oil?
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:52 AM on August 26, 2023
There's quite a bit of fat in maize, which the Mexica are a lot of, plus they had other fat sources like nuts and seeds (especially squash seeds), amaranth and to a lesser degree various meats, avocado and cacao.
Nixtamalized maize alone has a reasonable amount of fat and protein.
posted by ssg at 12:23 PM on August 26, 2023
Nixtamalized maize alone has a reasonable amount of fat and protein.
posted by ssg at 12:23 PM on August 26, 2023
dividing up cuisine like that is an intriguing taxonomical distinction, but I doubt it would be useful when it's more often "whatever we can get our hands on the cheapest".
Runs both ways though historically? In a given region the same fats will be cheapest most of the time, and cuisines adapt to make the most of them.
posted by clew at 4:24 PM on August 26, 2023
Runs both ways though historically? In a given region the same fats will be cheapest most of the time, and cuisines adapt to make the most of them.
posted by clew at 4:24 PM on August 26, 2023
Animal fat in Australia is not even that much of a throwback, my mother grew up eating lard, dripping et el and she was born in 1950.
My dad liked to tell me how, growing up in the Great Depression, the biggest treat in the world would be getting half a slice of bread spread with lard and a sprinkle of sugar. I think that single image has stayed with me and taught me to find the simplest pleasure in things.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:58 AM on August 27, 2023
My dad liked to tell me how, growing up in the Great Depression, the biggest treat in the world would be getting half a slice of bread spread with lard and a sprinkle of sugar. I think that single image has stayed with me and taught me to find the simplest pleasure in things.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:58 AM on August 27, 2023
Argan oil has culinary and non-culinary uses in Morocco.
Walnut oil gets used in salad dressings in France (and Spain I think).
posted by the duck by the oboe at 2:14 AM on August 28, 2023
Walnut oil gets used in salad dressings in France (and Spain I think).
posted by the duck by the oboe at 2:14 AM on August 28, 2023
Fencing Gal: Hard to believe now, but I grew up eating hot dogs fried in bacon fat.
My dad (born 1943) was a good eater as a boy, and was served a pan of bacon, eggs fried in the grease, and whatever was left poured over toast. For breakfast. "Most important meal of the day, &c."
He's six foot three and I am sure never weighed more than 185 pounds in his entire life.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:42 AM on August 29, 2023
My dad (born 1943) was a good eater as a boy, and was served a pan of bacon, eggs fried in the grease, and whatever was left poured over toast. For breakfast. "Most important meal of the day, &c."
He's six foot three and I am sure never weighed more than 185 pounds in his entire life.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:42 AM on August 29, 2023
Just on the butter-vs-oil thing: A 1963 French-Italian movie has a restauranteur returning home after WWII; he has been away thirteen years. His wife has taken up with another restauranteur who cooks with butter, our hero uses oil. So the two compete for the love of the guy's wife by cooking, each with his own fat. My Wife's Husband (orig. La cuisine au beurre )
posted by CCBC at 3:31 PM on August 31, 2023
posted by CCBC at 3:31 PM on August 31, 2023
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by essexjan at 5:27 AM on August 26, 2023