Butter and ghee (churning of cream)
Mantequilla y ghee (batido de nata)
- Date
- c. 2500 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Tell al-Ubaid, Dhi Qar, Iraq
- Credited to
- Sumerians and Vedic peoples
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Milk fat separated by churning cream and, once clarified, turned into ghee that keeps without refrigeration. A Sumerian frieze from Al-Ubaid shows milking and the processing of milk in vessels.
Reading the Al-Ubaid frieze (c. 2500 BC) as a butter-making scene is debated; Vedic hymns (around 1500 BC) already mention ghee. Milk lipid residues in pottery are considerably older but do not prove churning.
What it led to
- cooking fat and fuel for lamps and ointments in Mesopotamia and India
- ghee as a pillar of South Asian cooking and ritual
- butter as the cooking fat of northern Europe