Ghee or clarified butter is coming from cow butter. The clarification of the butter is handmade by warming up him at a very low temperature, during a long time, in order to remove lactose, casein and water, without losing all the good things of the butter. In this way, he doesn’t brown while cooking.
In Ayurveda, the ghee represents life engendering on the earth. A brahman would tell you that a meal without ghee is an incomplete meal. It’s the most used greasy substance in India. He represents life in its purest form.
Mixed with spices, this golden butter has the capacity to potentialize their assets.
But the ghee does not serve only for food, in Ayurvedic Medicine, we say that it becomes medicinal ghee from 7 years. It is then proposed combined with plants, as cure. It can also be used as cosmetic in the form of massage because he softens the skin.
The ghee is conserved at ambient temperature and protected from the direct light of the sun. Your grandparents problably already know the clarified butter. In their time, butter was automatically clarified for preservation because coolers were not very known. Given that ghee is a pure liquid, it can be preserved very well.