Sour Cream, Yogurt Cream, and Labneh

Appears in
Jewish Holiday Cooking

By Jayne Cohen

Published 2008

  • About
Slathered on blintzes and onion-laced herring, spooned over strawberries, whisked into fruit soup, Jewish food can be extravagant with thick, luscious sour cream.
Delicious? Yes. Fattening? Absolutely. But real sour cream is a sensational splurge.

“And her face always looked strained and worried, as if her shipload of sour cream had just sunk.”

—I. L. Peretz, “In the Mail Coach

And there are alternatives. You can substitute reduced-fat sour cream. But personally, I tend to stay away from most such products—either the taste itself is strange or the ingredients list contains too many weird, unwholesome additives. I’d rather eat the real stuff, just less frequently. And between times, I use the Sephardi counterpart made of drained yogurt, sometimes referred to as yogurt cheese, here called yogurt cream.