Guide
Allergens in ghee
Ghee is milk. Clarifying butter removes most of the water and some of the lactose, but it does not take ghee off the milk allergen. A PPDS curry or cake made with ghee must emphasise milk.
Reviewed against official guidance.SourcesNot legal advice.
The usual pattern
Ghee is butter heated until the milk solids separate. Those solids are why it is still a milk product. Vegetable ghee and vanaspati are different fats and need their own specifications — some contain milk, some do not.
What to check in ghee
| What you see | What it means on a PPDS label |
|---|---|
| Dairy ghee | Milk |
| Vegetable ghee | Check the spec — do not assume it is milk or milk-free |
| Butter used instead | Also milk |
| Coconut oil used instead | Not milk, and coconut is not a tree nut |
How to write it on the label
PPDS food needs the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with the 14 allergens emphasised every time they appear. The Food Standards Agency’s PPDS guidance is the practical reference. A typical ingredients fragment looks like this — yours must follow the specification of the product you actually use.
Example fragment
Ghee (milk).
Where it shows up
Curries, rice, naan, some biscuits and South Asian sweets.
Vegetable ghee in a dairy ghee recipe
Switching fats to suit a vegan order means a new ingredients list. Do not leave milk emphasised if the batch used coconut oil, or the reverse.
Lactose-intolerant advice is not the same as allergen labelling. The legal emphasis is milk.
Specification first
Brands differ. Treat this page as the usual pattern, then match the label to the tub, bag or recipe in front of you.
Questions
Is ghee dairy-free?
What if the tub says lactose-free?
Official sources
Everything on this page traces back to these. Where they and we disagree, they are right — tell us and we'll fix it.
- Introduction to allergen labelling for PPDS foodFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
- Labelling guidance for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food productsFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
- Food allergen labelling and information requirements technical guidanceFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK