Ghee is a type of clarified butter, but not all clarified butter is ghee. Both are butter with the water and milk solids removed; ghee is cooked longer, until those solids brown, which gives it a cooked, caramel-like flavour that plain clarified butter lacks. Indian and international food standards draw the line at that flavour.
In everyday English the two words are often swapped, and research papers, including two cited below, write "clarified butter (ghee)" as if they were one thing. That is close enough for a shopping list, but not how food regulators put it. This article sets out the definitions, where the official categories overlap, and what the differences mean in practice.
At a glance
- Ghee is clarified butter cooked on until its milk solids brown; plain clarified butter is strained while the solids are still pale.
- FSSAI requires ghee to be at least 99.5 per cent milk fat with at most 0.5 per cent moisture; butter oil 99.6 and 0.4; anhydrous milk fat 99.8 and 0.1; table butter 80 per cent fat with up to 16 per cent moisture.
- Both FSSAI and Codex set ghee apart by its "especially developed flavour and physical structure", not by its composition.
- A National Dairy Research Institute review describes ghee as heated at 110 to 120 °C for 10 to 20 minutes, which is where the browning flavours form.
- Ghee is not officially drier than clarified butter: no standard defines "clarified butter", and anhydrous milk fat is held to a stricter moisture limit than ghee.
What is the difference between ghee and clarified butter?
The difference is how far the cooking goes. Clarified butter is heated until its water boils off and its milk solids separate, then strained while they are still pale. Ghee is heated further, until those solids brown in the hot fat. That extra cooking creates the flavour the standards use to set ghee apart.
Butter is mostly fat, with some water and a small amount of milk protein, milk sugar and minerals spread through it. Heat it gently and three things happen. The water evaporates. The proteins and sugars, now without water around them, collect as solids. The fat that is left becomes clear.
Stop there and strain, and you have clarified butter in the narrow sense this article uses: clean, mild milk fat. Keep going, and the solids begin to cook in the hot fat. They brown, the fat takes on their flavour, and the result is ghee. Both start from the same butter; ghee simply has one more step.
What happens to butter as it turns into ghee?
As butter is heated past the point where its water has gone, the leftover proteins and milk sugars react with each other in the hot fat. These browning reactions, among them the Maillard reaction, produce the compounds behind ghee's taste. A review from India's National Dairy Research Institute describes ghee as heated at 110–120 °C for 10–20 minutes.
That review explains that moisture evaporates during heating while protein, lactose, fat and minerals change at the same time, and that the interaction among these heat-altered substances produces the characteristic ghee flavour. A 2025 laboratory study of ghee from two cow breeds, published in Food Chemistry: X, clarified its butter on a direct flame until the temperature reached 120 °C and the moisture fell below 0.5 per cent. It describes ghee as a heated milk product characterised by distinct flavours produced as a result of heating, and lists where they come from:
- Lactones, which the study says give coconut, peach, sweet and fruity notes.
- Maltol, with a caramel-butterscotch flavour, a Maillard reaction product formed by heat and caramelisation.
- 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, a heat-generated compound with caramel and sweet notes.
- Free fatty acids and carbonyls, which the study attributes, with the lactones, to the Maillard reaction, sugar dehydration and degradation.
The same study found that the method used to make the butter changes the result: ghee from curd-churned butter and from fermented cream had higher levels of several of these compounds than ghee from unfermented cream. That is a laboratory comparison of six samples, so it shows that method matters, not which ghee anyone will prefer. Our page on the bilona process describes the curd-churned route step by step.
How do FSSAI and Codex define ghee?
Both put ghee in the same family as butter oil and anhydrous milk fat: fat made only from milk, with almost all its water and non-fat solids removed. What separates ghee, in both texts, is its especially developed flavour and physical structure. FSSAI adds that this results from its method of manufacture.
FSSAI's standard for milk fat products, in the Food Products Standards regulations, covers milk fat, butter oil, anhydrous milk fat, anhydrous butter oil and ghee together. The Codex Alimentarius standard for milkfat products, the international reference text, covers the same group and describes ghee as a product obtained exclusively from milk, cream or butter. Neither uses "clarified butter" as a product name. The composition limits are close but not identical:
| Product | Standard | Milk fat, minimum | Moisture, maximum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Table butter | FSSAI | 80.0% | 16.0% |
| Milk fat or butter oil | FSSAI | 99.6% | 0.4% |
| Anhydrous milk fat or anhydrous butter oil | FSSAI | 99.8% | 0.1% |
| Ghee | FSSAI | 99.5% | 0.5% |
| Anhydrous milkfat or anhydrous butteroil | Codex | 99.8% | 0.1% |
| Milkfat, butteroil or ghee | Codex | 99.6% | No limit set |
Butter is included for scale. At 80 per cent fat, up to 20 per cent of table butter can be something other than fat (100 minus 80), most of it water. Every product in the rest of the table is at least 99.5 per cent fat. FSSAI also sets identity tests for ghee, such as a minimum Reichert-Meissl value, a negative Baudouin test and the absence of β-sitosterol, checked by a method FSSAI lists for detecting vegetable oil in ghee. Our guide to telling whether ghee is pure explains the Reichert-Meissl and Baudouin tests.
The two texts differ in small ways beyond the numbers. FSSAI requires the raw material to be free from added flavour, colour or preservative. Codex names starter cultures of lactic acid bacteria as a permitted ingredient. Both allow certain food additives, but only those on their own approved lists and within set limits.
Does ghee have less water than clarified butter?
Not by any official measure. The standards do not treat clarified butter as a separate product, so there is no legal figure to compare. FSSAI actually allows ghee slightly more moisture, 0.5 per cent, than butter oil at 0.4 per cent or anhydrous milk fat at 0.1 per cent.
The claim that ghee is "drier" than clarified butter is common, and it makes intuitive sense: longer cooking drives off more water. At home that may often be true. But it is not something the standards or the studies above measure, and anhydrous milk fat, which the US standard below describes as made by physical separation, is held to a stricter moisture limit than ghee. The fair statement is that ghee and clarified butter are both close to water-free, and both are far drier than butter.
Keeping quality follows from that. The National Dairy Research Institute review notes that the unsaturated free fatty acids in ghee make it susceptible to oxidative spoilage, and that efforts to extend its shelf life have centred on adding natural antioxidants and other ingredients. We could not find a study that directly compares how long ghee and plain clarified butter keep, so this article does not give a figure. Our article on ghee storage and shelf life covers the practical side.
What does "clarified butter" mean on a label?
It has no definition of its own in the Codex or FSSAI texts, so its meaning depends on the user. In industry the nearest products are butter oil and anhydrous milk fat, and the US industry standard asks anhydrous milk fat to taste of very little. Ghee is defined by the developed flavour this industrial standard leaves out.
The clearest example comes from the United States. The American Dairy Products Institute's standard for anhydrous milk fat, effective October 2024, defines it as fat from sweet cream or butter brought to nearly 100 per cent by physical separation, with at least 99.8 per cent milk fat and no more than 0.1 per cent moisture. Its required flavour is a "clean bland characteristic flavor and odor". Compare that with the Codex and FSSAI wording for ghee, an "especially developed flavour". On composition the two products sit almost side by side in the table above. On flavour they aim in opposite directions.
So "clarified butter" can mean anything from a bland industrial fat to ghee itself. When a jar on an Indian shelf says ghee, the regulator expects the one with an especially developed flavour. Many people use either word for both.
When does the difference between them matter?
It matters mainly for flavour. Both are almost pure milk fat, at least 99.5 per cent under the standards in the table above, so the difference you notice at the table is the taste. Ghee carries the cooked, caramel-like notes of browned milk solids. Plain clarified butter suits a dish where you want butter's taste without its water.
If you are deciding between ghee, butter and cooking oils for a particular dish, our comparison of ghee, butter and oil for cooking goes through smoke point, flavour and use, so it is not repeated here. Two points are specific to this comparison:
- For flavour, choose by the browning. If you want the taste of ghee, the solids must have browned. A pale, mild "clarified butter" will not give it.
- For labels, choose by the name. In India, a product sold as ghee is held to FSSAI's ghee limits, including its identity tests; one sold as butter oil or anhydrous milk fat is held to different ones.
Himdhara's ghee is clarified slowly over a wood fire from curd-churned butter, which is the ghee end of this spectrum, not the bland one.
The short version
Ghee is clarified butter cooked further, until its milk solids brown and give it a cooked, caramel-like flavour through the Maillard reaction and related heat reactions. Indian and international standards group ghee with butter oil and anhydrous milk fat, all at least 99.5 per cent milk fat, and set it apart by its especially developed flavour and structure. Ghee is not officially drier: FSSAI allows it 0.5 per cent moisture against 0.1 per cent for anhydrous milk fat. In the kitchen, choose between them by taste.
Sources
Further reading behind the figures above. Himdhara's own numbers — yields, batch results — come from our production records and the batch reports on the lab reports page.
- Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. Chapter 2: Food Product Standards, 2.1 Dairy Products and Analogues (2.1.8 Standard for Milk Fat Products; 2.1.9 Standard for Butter). Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011.
- Codex Alimentarius Commission (adopted 1973, amended 2010). Codex Standard for Milkfat Products (CODEX STAN 280-1973). FAO/WHO.
- Kumbhare S, Prasad W, Khamrui K, Wani AD, Sahu J (2023). Recent innovations in functionality and shelf life enhancement of ghee, clarified butter fat. Journal of Food Science and Technology.
- Kataria D, Singh G (2025). Effect of processing methods on fatty acid composition and flavour profile of clarified butter (ghee) obtained from Deoni and Holstein Friesian cow breeds. Food Chemistry: X.
- American Dairy Products Institute (2024). Anhydrous Milk Fat Standard, Version 1.0. ADPI.