Families of Fresh Fermented Milks

Unlike most cheeses, which undergo several stages of manipulation and continue to evolve for weeks or months, fresh fermented milks are usually finished and ready for eating within hours or days. A recent encyclopedia catalogued several hundred different kinds! Most of them originated in western Asia, eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, and have been carried across the globe by countless emigrants, many of whom dipped a cloth in their family’s culture, dried it gently, and guarded it until they could moisten it in the milk of their new home.