Let’s start with the basics. Who figured out that heating up milk and effectively curdling or souring it could preserve milk? To answer this question, we must go to Mesopotamia, the “Cradle of Civilization.” For the first stop on our dairy adventure around the world, we are going to the Middle East!
For the purposes of this research, I have defined the Middle East as comprising Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Some definitions also include Greece or the Northern African countries Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Afghanistan and Pakistan are also often left out, but I have decided to include them due to geographic and cultural similarities.
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| Source: The Jerusalem Post |
Mesopotamia is located in present day Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and parts of Turkey in the watershed of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is here that archeologists have found the earliest evidence of the consumption of dairy products. Carbon isotope analysis of pottery sherds indicates that dairy products have been consumed in the Middle East up to 4,000 years ago (Scharfman, 473). Additionally the earliest written records, including cuneiform tablets from 3100 to 3000 B.C. and the earliest sources from the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Hebrews, reveal that milk was rarely consumed in its raw liquid form but rather soured and turned into butter (clarified for longevity), cheese, and dried buttermilk balls, or milk cakes. Milk cakes probably served as a form of instant milk, and archeologists have unearthed petrified chunks with holes in them in the Middle East, suggesting they were strung and hung to dry. These cheeses’ modern manifestations include bagel in Kuwait and a cheese called Kisk found throughout the Middle East (Valenze, 2011, 30).
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| 3,300-Year Old Cheese found in Saqqara, Egypt Tomb. Source: Archeology.com |
Though not consumed raw, milk, and the animals, specifically cows, from which it derives, served religious purposes for ancient civilizations in the Middle East. The Egyptian goddess Isis was the most powerful deity and embodied milk’s association life’s sustenance. As the “giver of life,” Isis championed mothers, matrons, and midwives in their jobs of sustaining life. In religious ceremonies and festivals to her and her husband Osiris, jars of milk served as offerings (Valenza, 15). From Egypt, Isis and her association with milk spread across the Middle East, resurfacing as Ishtar, the “benevolent cow,” in Mesopotamia; Hathor, the cow goddess in Egyptian Iconography; and the Virgin Mary in Christianity (Ibid, 17).
The purpose of making dairy products like cheese and yogurt is highly practical: it takes a highly perishable substance, milk, and extends its life; removes some of the lactose from milk, making it more digestible for a lactose intolerant population; and served as an important source of protein. In the Middle East, cheese was usually made with sheep milk and boiled before being salted to kill off any bacteria. Yogurt or kefir would be made with goat milk.
Dairy consumption is on the rise in the Middle East. Cypatriots have trademarked “Halloumi,” a boiled cheese that can be grilled or fried, exporting it around the world (Scharfman, 474). Rising incomes in oil producing countries has trebled imports of dairy products, and governments have built integrated supply chains with large dairy farms, such as Almarai, a Saudi farm founded in 1977. European companies, seeing a market opportunity, have invested in dairy companies, including Juhayne, the largest Egyptian dairy. Of particular interest for these European companies is the already established tradition in the Middle East of eating cheese and yogurt, offering a market for the US and Europe to dump their surplus (Terazono, 2015). However, low oil prices and civil unrest make the Middle Eastern market unstable, and there is still a strong tradition of making cheeses and yogurt at home.
With the above history in mind, I set out to make my own Middle Eastern dairy products. As this is my first time, I chose to make a fresh cheese, paneer, and a strained yogurt called labneh.
Paneer, most commonly associated with Northern Indian cuisine, is a product of trade and invasion. The earliest reference to a cheese similar to contemporary paneer appeared around A.D. 75-300 and described a sold mass made from heated milk and curd. It is believed Afghan and Iranian invaders introduced paneer to Pakistan and India around the 13thor 14thcentury, which is supported by its similarity to cheeses found among Afghan and Iranian nomads and tribal peoples (Kumar, Rai, Niranjan, & Bhat, 2014). Paneer can be made with buffalo or cows milk and is fairly easy to make, with a firm texture and milky, bland taste that absorbs flavors well.
To make my own paneer, I heated 1.5 gallons of milk to approximately 180°F, cooled to 170°F, and then added my acid, in this case ¾ cup lemon juice. The curds and whey almost immediately separated.
I then drained the curds in a colander lined with butter muslin.
Finally, I pressed the cheese with a makeshift cheese press. I did add a pinch of salt to my paneer. While this is not usually done, other fresh cheeses in the Middle East, like Ackawi, add liberal amounts of salt to their curds. The result? My paneer was a bit crumbly, possibly from draining it too long, but I might try placing my pressed cheese in cold water to firm it up. Paneer can be fried, grilled, or used a meat substitute in soups, stews, or curries.
Next up was labneh. While just as simple as paneer, making labneh takes multiple days if you are making it from scratch. Yogurt is known by different names across the world, such as dahiin India, zabadi in Egypt, mast in Iran, leben raibin Saudi Arabia, and laban in Iraq and Lebanon (Fisberg, Machado, 2015, 4). It is believed the word “yogurt” comes from the Turkish word “yoğurmak,” which means to thicken, coagulate, or curdle. Texts from the 11thcentury in Turkey describe its use by nomadic Turks, and scholars believe Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, fed his army yogurt (Ibid, 5). Labneh is a staple throughout the Middle East and is traditionally made at home. However, like in many places, people are increasingly switching to store bought.
For my yogurt I heated a gallon of milk to approximately 185°F, and then quickly cooled it down to 115°F. The wonderful thing about yogurt is that it makes itself. Once at 115°F I added ¾ cup of plain yogurt. The microbes in the yogurt will multiple in the warm, curdled milk, thickening it into a spoon-able consistency. I then quickly wrapped the bowl in aluminum foil and my flannel jacket to incubate the yogurt overnight. The next day, I had yogurt! But for it to become labneh, I then had to strain out the liquid. Mixing with salt and a little lemon juice, I placed the yogurt in a cheesecloth bag and hung it from the facet to drain overnight. The longer it drains, the firmer the yogurt. Finally, I shaped the yogurt into balls, rolled them in Za’tar, a traditional Middle Eastern spice blend, and placed in a container with olive oil. Labneh can be used as a dip or spread.
There are so many more delicious dairy products in the Middle East, including kefir, a fermented yogurt product, and a variety of cheeses. I am excited to try making more of these products, the vestiges of the first civilizations’ dairy products.
If you are interested in making paneer or yogurt, I used the following recipes as guides:
Paneer
Yogurt
Works Cited
Fisberg, M. & Machado, R. (2015). History of yogurt and current pattern of consumption.Nutrition Reviews, vol73(S1), 4-7. doi:10.1093/nutrit/nuv020.
Kumar, S., Rai, D. C., Niranjan, K., & Bhat, Z. F. (2014). Paneer- An Indian soft cheese variant: a review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 51(5), 821-831, doi: 10.1007/s13197-011-0567-X.
Scharfman, P. (2016). Middle East. In Donnelly, C. (ed.), The Oxford Companion to
Terazono, E. (2015 Jun 18). Middle East dairy demand rides on oil. Financial TimesAccessed from https://www.ft.com/content/8168d320-14d1-11e5-a51f-00144feabdc0.
Valenze, D. (2011). Milk: A Local and Global History.New Haven: Yale University Press.
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