I’m on my iPad, so this will be harder to do. I searched for the qualities of babassu oil. There is good info regarding the plant and its origins and uses at
www.pfaf.org (attalea speciosa - Mart.). So far, everything I’ve found regarding the melting point unequivocally states it is around 76 degrees. I don’t see anything listed as having a higher melting point. I know the oil I purchased is from Soaper’s Choice and came in a gallon jug. It was hard as a rock. I melted it down and poured it into pint mason jars. I’ve kept the jars in the fridge and the oil is like a brick. However, they’ve been sitting on my kitchen counter since Thursday and they are STILL solid. The last I checked (Saturday) I could NOT shove a metal spoon through a full jar of oil to touch the bottom. That is a PINT sized glass jar sitting out on a counter. I can take a metal knife and shove the entire thing into my full jar of coconut oil. That’s the huge gallon sized jar from Big Lots that I got on sale a couple of years ago. The coconut oil is extremely soft and pours easily. The coconut is a cloudy semi-liquid. The babassu is a solid opaque white that has the hardness similar to cold lard. When it’s been in the fridge, it has the hardness similar to cold tallow. (Cold tallow can be a lethal weapon!!) Now they’re both listed as 76 degree melting point and they’re both sitting in a house with no air conditioning. You would thing the container with the smaller volume would have the softer/more liquid contents; however, that is just not the case. The huge jug of coconut oil has a much more liquid consistency than the smaller jars of babassu. My personal, non scientific, completely factless assumption about this is: MAGIC. No, not really, but close to it. Whatever magical ingredient that naturally occurs in the babassu oil that does not occur in the coconut oil (thereby making the babassu oil the antibacterial oil that coconut oil is not) is responsible for the babassu staying harder at higher temperatures. Those little germ fighters gotta beat the heat to stay alive and fight our funk. They can’t do it if they’re swimming in an oil slick. They’re doing some little magic dance to keep their environment solid until it hits the pits.
This is interesting. I looked at the products on the website and they actually have origin information, which I have never seen before. The difference between the “butter” and the “oil” is in the processing. I was afraid the butter was like other “butters” which would be a mix of the specific oil plus hydrogenated vegetable oil (usually palm). I never buy “coffee butter” or “cranberry butter” for that reason. However, according to the info posted, the butter is unrefined babassu seed kernel oil. They basically smash it, get rid of the debris, wash it with water and that’s it. The other is refined and bleached and deodorized and a whole bunch of other stuff done. Possibly (just guessing, I have no scientific background) during the refining process some of the fat solids are lost making a softer end product. Kind of like the difference between full fat and 2% milk. There is definitely a watered down texture and mouth-feel that is evident when making soups and creamy desserts. Maybe that mouth feel in foods got translated into melting point (or perceived melting point) or hardness (perceived hardness) in the end product. Although, I like my “magic germ fighter” theory much better than this “how it’s processed” theory.
