Milk (5 page)

Western dairyists’ lack of interest in buffaloes’ milk is equally puzzling. When taken from the tropics, buffaloes are surprisingly good at adapting to other surroundings. They probably ranged as far north as southern Mesopotamia from ancient times, and since then have been successfully introduced into Egypt, the Levant, and parts of Italy and the Balkans. But only today are a handful of experimenters trying to see how well water buffaloes can tolerate more northerly temperate climates. Some British and American farmers have managed to generate a little publicity for swamp buffaloes’ meat as an alternative to beef, and a very few are trying to do the same for river buffaloes’–milk yogurt and mozzarella cheese.

Possessing two milk sources of equal culinary importance makes India unique among the world’s dairying countries. (There is some use of
goats’ milk in hilly northern regions, but nationally it ranks a very distant third.) Cows’ milk and buffaloes’ milk are used all but interchangeably for every kind of dairy product. But because buffaloes’ milk is more concentrated and gives higher yields of milkfat, protein, and virtually any other milk-derived product per original pound of milk, it is more commercially profitable. Cows’ milk enjoys higher prestige, undoubtedly because of its association with the sacred animal.

Brahmins have long cherished an image of the cow as a crown jewel in a complex, prohibition-fenced scheme of beliefs about the ritual purity or pollution of food. In this worldview she is the wellspring of life in palpable form, inexhaustibly pouring forth the miracle of milk, a holy substance considered to have been purified by inner fires in the grass-transforming alembic that is the cow’s body. (In fact, a
Hindu creation myth describes a primordial sea of milk as the stuff from which many great gifts of the world were “churned” under the direction of Vishnu.) The cow-mother also gradually became a symbol of
Mother India—originally, a benevolent symbol; now something more aggressive. Cow worship never used to have anything like the frankly militant Hinduist associations that it enjoys in today’s political-religious tinderbox. (Not only is there a national prohibition against beef slaughter, but people remarking too loudly that even Brahmins used to eat beef in Vedic times are likely to incur harassment if not death threats.) Not surprisingly, modern industrialized cow dairying has proceeded somewhat cautiously in India despite a good deal of entrepreneurial interest and expertise, and despite the fact that milk is more central to cooking there than in any other nation. It is no exaggeration to say that, without milk, the doctrine of
ahimsa (the inviolability of animal as well as human life) could not have achieved its primacy and the flowering of vegetarianism throughout India would have been impossible.

From prehistoric times, the sweltering
Indian climate ensured that, as in the
Diverse Sources Belt, milk would be more often used soured than fresh. But there are several critical differences. Not only Western-style aged
cheeses but the fresh and brined cheeses of the earlier milking region are conspicuous by their absence from Indian tables. In fact, so are most dairy foods made from raw rather than cooked milk.

Boiling milk after milking and before using it for most other purposes seems to be a very ancient Indian
culinary tradition. It changes the milk’s receptiveness to different culturing organisms, discouraging those that would produce fresh cheese. (A second anticheese factor is that killing young animals for
rennet would violate the principle of ahimsa.) But boiling makes milk all the more suitable for
yogurt, which depends on having “
thermophilic,” or heat-preferring,
bacteria introduced at a temperature close to 110°F. Most of the favorite Indian dairy products start off with milk being boiled and allowed to cool until it reaches the right stage to be inoculated with a little of yesterday’s yogurt.

You might not guess how thoroughly yogurt from both cows’ and buffaloes’ milk pervades the cuisine from the many Anglo-Indian books about food that insist on saying “curd” or “curds” for indigenous words such as the Hindi
dahi
and Tamil
thayir.
Yogurt is a dish in its own right and the foundation of various beverages and cold relishes, as well as an element in innumerable sauces, dressings, soups, and desserts. It is also the starting point of churned
butter (Hindi
makkan,
Tamil
vennai
). Because of its basis in yogurt, the
buttermilk (Hindi
chhas,
Tamil
moru
) resulting from butter churning has nuances that would be hard to duplicate here in America.

In fact, anything based on
yogurt—highly nonstandardized throughout the subcontinent—is likely to taste different even from one
Indian region to another. In addition, there will be differences between the
cows’-
milk and buffaloes’-milk versions. Buffalo yogurt starts out creamier and denser, and yields more butter in churning. The butter itself is almost pure white because it contains more finished
vitamin A than the yellowish precursor beta-carotene that predominates in most cows’ milk.

Freshly churned butter of either kind can be eaten as is, but is more often slowly simmered to produce the ambrosial cooking fat called
ghee (Tamil
neyyu
), which is also yellow or white depending on the animal it came from. The long, gentle cooking evaporates any remaining water and makes it easier to “clarify” the milkfat, or separate it from any residual milk solids; without such treatment it would be extremely perishable.

Plain fresh milk does play a part in Indian cuisine, but there are distinct regional preferences that perhaps reflect different degrees of lactose
tolerance. Though it is hard to sort out the many statistical claims that have been published with very hazy scientific documentation, people in the northern states appear much more likely to maintain lactose-digesting ability into adulthood. In those regions, people occasionally drink milk as a beverage—but usually when it has been heated and partly cooled, and usually with some kind of sweetening.

The north has also produced a milk-based specialty that arouses curious reactions in other regions of India. It is a kind of curd made by heating milk (sometimes buttermilk) and adding an acidulant like lemon juice that causes casein (the major milk protein) to precipitate out of the whey in a semisolid white mass. Called
chhenna
in that form,
panir
when cut into cubes, this very bland and slightly rubbery substance often turns up on English-language restaurant menus as “cheese” or something like “cottage cheese,” “soft cheese,” or “pot cheese.” In fact it is none of the above, never having been exposed to either rennet curdling or bacterial fermentation. But it is a wonderfully versatile foil to rich-flavored sauces and purées, and in the form of chhenna makes lovely patties and dumplings.

The idea for this not-exactly-cheese may have come from either the conquering Moghuls, who swept through India from north to south starting in about 1525, or the Portuguese, who were already carving out spheres of influence before the Moghuls arrived. There was a block to its acceptance: the widespread Hindu belief that “breaking,” or “cutting,” milk into “parts” (curd and whey) violated the holy substance’s integral nature. For some reason, the taboo was soon overcome by northern Hindus but frequently persists elsewhere. This is why chhenna and panir never became everyday foods in regions where Moghul or Portuguese influence was slight. Generally speaking, they
are less important the farther you get from the first Moghul strongholds in the north.

A more widely accepted northern contribution is unsoured
milk cooked down to different concentrations, usually with added sugar. Among the passionately loved specialties based on reduced milk are several forms of clotted cream (
malai
); various sweet, rich milk puddings thickened with rice; and a fudgelike concentrate known as
khoa,
which is the basis of an entire sweetmeat industry (especially in West Bengal State and neighboring Bangladesh). For non-Indians, the huge repertoire of reduced-milk confections and sweets tends to be at best an acquired taste. On their home territory, however, they are as defining a preference as whiskey in Scotland.

As in the
Diverse Sources Belt, the practice of drinking milk fresh and unflavored has historically been infrequent, even in zones of widespread lactose
tolerance. But today India has an aggressively progress-minded dairy industry (though it is somewhat constrained by attitudes toward cows), powerfully influenced by modern Western notions about milk drinking and eager to be a model for Western-style dairying enterprises in the less-developed Asian and African tropics. It is impossible not to wonder how the older milk-based traditions will be affected by the imposing of views originally shaped by radically different cultures and geographies.

It took many undocumented centuries for livestock husbandry, including milking, to spread from the Diverse Sources Belt not only
southward into India but northward beyond the Black Sea and the Caucasus into another east-west zone stretching from the western
Russian steppes through Ukraine and north of the Carpathian Mountains into Poland, parts of the future Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Baltic lands, and the fringes of
Scandinavia (where there is also an admixture of other influences from the west). With this third great dairying zone we move a little closer to the preferences that most Americans understand and that are now being exported all around the world.

Cattle held an advantage over the other domestic animals introduced to northeastern Europe: They’d been there before. That is, they were returning to parts of the chilly latitudes where their aurochs forebears had been roaming when the last ice sheet decamped for the North Pole. (
Aurochsen were still at large in
Neolithic times; they became more elusive as human populations took over, but they didn’t absolutely disappear until one last female died in Poland in 1627.) Long, cold winters and brief, relatively cool summers with good amounts of rainfall to keep pastures green were exactly what cattle needed to thrive and produce milk. Wherever they were brought in these parts, they became the dominant
milch animals.

The number-one status of cows rested not only on their environmental suitability but on a preference for their
milk, clearly evident by modern times.
Goats had their niche as “the poor man’s cow” where grass was too meager for a real one.
Sheep were mostly relegated to wool or (more sporadically) meat production, with milking a very minor priority. The comparative blandness of cows’-milk products emerged as the way many people thought dairy foods
ought
to taste. This preference was largely shared by Slavs, Balts, and the Ashkenazic Jews who diffused into many parts of the region. The contribution of Jews to local dairying from the Middle Ages on must have been vast. No one else had any particular religious motivation for exploiting varied uses of milk. Observant Jews, however, were required to prepare either “meat” or “milk” meals with no mixing of the two. Not only were “milk” meals cheaper, but it was easier to turn milk into a range of delicious forms.

As in the two previously discussed zones, people very rarely made a habit of drinking fresh milk as it came from the source—and this despite the fact that at least some northeastern Europeans have a certain degree of lactose
tolerance (Ashkenazim less so). Even in northerly climes, milking seasons used to coincide naturally with the warmest weather of the year, when milk sours fairly fast without refrigeration. (Manipulation of milking cycles for year-round production is a modern commercial development.) Here and there, unsoured milk was used as a thrifty base for
soups in lieu of meat, or went into the cereal
porridges that were the crucial peasant mainstay everywhere. But for the most part milk was consumed in cultured form, either drunk plain or made into fresh curd cheeses.
Renneted fresh cheeses from uncultured milk also had some currency, but most kinds used a combination of souring and renneting. The
whey was yet another porridge vehicle. (Grain-based porridges were the basic survival dishes of the Northeastern Cow Belt, and even small amounts of milk or whey greatly increased their nutritional value.)

Brined cheeses like those of the Diverse Sources Belt never became popular except in a few Central European areas of overlap with the Balkans (for instance, Hungary and Romania). And generally speaking, neither the local kinds of
sour milk nor the local fresh cheeses closely duplicated those of the more southerly milking zone. The reason is that under slightly cooler conditions, different types of
bacteria with slightly different flavor effects are likely to work their will on milk either spontaneously or through inoculation. To produce what traditional
yogurt eaters will recognize as yogurt, you need emphatically warm temperatures (and preferably a preliminary heating of the milk). Milk left to sit out at less sultry temperatures will attract “
mesophilic” bacteria like those responsible for souring today’s cultured buttermilk. Add rennet at a strategic moment and you will get something not unlike the pot cheese or farmer cheese familiar to many Americans, with a softer or firmer curd depending on very small gradations of temperature. But with patience
you can arrive at a very similar, slightly tarter cheese made without rennet—the practice of observant Jews, since milk could not come in contact with an animal substance like rennet.

Cream in cultured form enjoyed greater importance in the Northeastern Cow Belt than in the lands to the south. Because
cows’ milk separates more quickly and fully on standing than
goats’ milk (though not as readily as
water buffaloes’ milk), it is easier to skim off the cream for use by itself, fresh or sour. Cooler temperatures also aid the process.
Clotted cream, which is really cooked, did not become as important here as in other regions.
Sour cream, ranging from slightly runny to nearly as thick as cream cheese, became a versatile cold sauce base, spread, and enrichment for soups and other dishes.