Why we cook with A2 cow ghee

Posted 14 August 2026

What A2 actually refers to

It is not a grade, a certification or a quality mark. It refers to beta-casein, one of the main proteins in cow's milk, which occurs in two common forms: A1 and A2. The difference between them is a single position in the protein chain — one amino acid, swapped.

Which form a cow produces comes down to breed. Indigenous Indian breeds — Gir, Sahiwal, Red Sindhi, Tharparkar — typically produce only the A2 form. Many of the high-yield European breeds that dominate industrial dairy produce A1, or a mixture of both.

So "A2 ghee" means, in plain terms, ghee made from the milk of those indigenous breeds. That is the whole of what the name tells you.

What we are not going to claim

You will find a great deal written online about A2 milk and digestion. We are not going to repeat any of it. Those claims are contested, we have not tested them on our own product, and we are not in a position to tell you what a ghee will or will not do inside your body.

We use A2 ghee because of how it is made and how it tastes, and because it is the ghee we cook with at home. That is an honest reason, and it is the only one we are offering. If you want the science, ask someone with a laboratory rather than a sweet shop.

How ghee gets its flavour

Ghee is butter simmered until the water cooks off and the milk solids sink and brown. That browning is where the flavour lives. It is a slow toasting, and it is the reason good ghee smells nutty and faintly caramelised rather than simply of butter.

It is also easy to get wrong in both directions. Rush it and the solids never colour, and you are left with something flat that tastes of not very much. Take it too far and they burn, and the whole batch turns acrid. The window is not enormous, which is why ghee has traditionally been something you learn by smell rather than by timer.

Why it matters in a sweet

More than people expect. Ghee is the carrier in these recipes — it is what the nuts are roasted in and what the flavour of everything else travels on. A dull ghee makes a dull bite no matter how good the pistachios were. It is one of those ingredients where the difference between adequate and excellent is invisible on an ingredient list and obvious in the mouth.

There is a reason ghee sits at the centre of Indian sweet-making rather than butter or oil: it keeps, it takes heat without breaking, and it carries aroma in a way neither of the others manages.

Where it is in our range

All of it. Every sweet we make that uses ghee uses A2 — there is no second, cheaper ghee kept for the products where we thought it would matter less. What changes from one sweet to the next is the job it is doing.

Most obviously in Nutri Masala Crunch, where cashews, almonds, raisins and a blend of pumpkin, sunflower and melon seeds are roasted in A2 cow ghee and then tossed in spices. Here the ghee is doing the roasting, so it is the first thing you smell when the jar opens.

In the Date Bites it works much more quietly — binding the dates and nuts together and carrying them, rather than announcing itself. Same ghee, completely different job.

The short version

A2 ghee is ghee from indigenous cow breeds. We use it because it tastes the way we want our sweets to taste. Anything beyond that is not ours to claim. The full range is on the menu, and there is more on what goes into these sweets in our post on what actually sweetens them.