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Butters

Phulwara Butter

Also: Phulwara fat, Chiuri butter, Chyuri butter, Indian butter tree fat, Diploknema butyracea seed fat, Madhuca butyracea seed fat, Aisandra butyracea seed fat.

Calculate a 100 % Phulwara Butter bar

Published values

Saponification value192.5–199.4 mg KOH/g
Used by the calculator196.0 mg KOH/g (midpoint)
SAP for NaOH0.1397 g/g
Iodine value43.8–47.4 g I₂/100 g
INS (SAP − IV)150
Melting point—
Unsaponifiable matter≤ 1.5 %

A bar made of 100 % Phulwara Butter

Hardness 65 above 29–54
Cleansing 0 below 12–22
Conditioning 35 below 44–69
Bubbly lather 0 below 14–46
Creamy lather 65 above 16–48

Conventional qualities summed from the fatty-acid groups; a single-oil bar is a reference point, not a recipe.

Fatty-acid profile

Fatty acidPublished range, %Used
Palmitic acid C16:0 · saturated 55.6–65.6 60.6
Stearic acid C18:0 · saturated 3.1–5.2 4.2
Oleic acid C18:1 27.4–36 31.7
Linoleic acid C18:2 3.3–3.8 3.6

Where these numbers come from

PlantFAdb (Michigan State University), based on the Seed Oil Fatty Acids (SOFA) database of the Max Rubner-Institut — PlantFAdb datasets for Madhuca butyracea (plant 10002) · read 2026-09-24

Datasets #22001 (1984), #20784 (1969) and #12463 (1978).

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India — Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011 - Chapter 2.2 'Fats, Oils and Fat Emulsions', Version 5 (01.08.2025), 2.2.4 item 10 'Phulwara Fat' · document dated 2025-08-01 · read 2026-09-24

Phulwara fat (refined): refractive index 1.4584-1.4600 at 40 C, saponification value 192.5-199.4, unsaponifiable matter not more than 1.5 %, iodine value (Wijs) 43.8-47.4, acid value not more than 0.5.

The seed fat of the Indian butter tree, Diploknema butyracea (syn. Aisandra butyracea, Madhuca butyracea, Bassia butyracea), called chiuri or chyuri in Nepal. It is unusually rich in palmitic acid: 55-66 % in the analyses below. Fatty acids are PlantFAdb's three datasets for Madhuca butyracea (plant 10002), order palmitic, linoleic, oleic, stearic: 'Butter from plants' (1984; SOFA TAB_005741) 65.6, 3.8, 27.4, 3.1; 'Fette und Lipoide' (Springer 1969; TAB_005743) 56.6, 3.8, 36.0, 3.6; 'Triglyceride composition of Madhuca butyraceae seed fat' (1978; TAB_005740) 55.6, 3.3, 35.9, 5.2. No typical is given; the ranges are min/max of the three. Saponification value 192.5-199.4, iodine value (Wijs) 43.8-47.4 and unsaponifiable matter not more than 1.5 % are the FSSAI standard for 'Phulwara Fat' (Chapter 2.2, 2.2.4 item 10: 'the fat obtained from clean and sound seed kernels of Phulwara [variously named Aisandra Butyrace (Roxb) Baehni, Madhuca Butyracea or Bassia Butyracea]', which 'shall be refined'), which also sets refractive index 1.4584-1.4600 at 40 C, acid value not more than 0.5 and flash point (Pensky-Martens closed) not less than 250 C. Check: the profile midpoints imply about 201 mg KOH/g (FSSAI midpoint 196, 2 % lower) but an iodine value of only about 33, below the FSSAI 43.8-47.4, so the refined fat the standard describes appears more unsaturated than these three older analyses. A PlantFAdb entry for Diploknema butyracea carries only the oil content (60 %). A 2021 Journal of Food Quality paper on the seed fat could not be retrieved (bot challenge). No CosIng INCI name was found for this fat.

This record is part of the open ingredient database (ODbL). Found an error or a better primary source? The dataset is on GitHub; corrections with a document link are welcome.