Certainly the first yogurt-makers didn’t scientifically classify the organisms that worked their wonders on milk. There are many thermophilic lactic-acid bacteria in addition to the two I’ve mentioned. In different regions, yogurt and yogurtlike foods probably involved combinations of organisms whose multiple alliances and shifts—and, incidentally, flavor effects—we may never be able to fully document. Sometimes the two basic yogurt bacteria got mixed in with others that preferred temperatures between about 90° and 100°F—the so-called mesophilic organisms, which could start multiplying after the milk cooled below optimum yogurt-setting temperatures and might introduce other flavor notes of their own. In parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia, people also learned to introduce yeasts that triggered carbon-dioxide fermentation and produced some alcohol.
(For more on the resulting kefir and kumys, as well as the fresh fermented products that were developed in the cool climates of northern Europe, see “Cultured Milk and Cream.”)
EAST IS EAST, AND WEST IS WEST—SOMETIMES THE TWAIN SHALL MEET
The vigorous state of yogurt sales in Europe and the United States belies the fact that many people in the Western world still don’t really get the taste of yogurt as found east of the Adriatic. It was a very late import to the modern West—that is, a few immigrants here and there probably had managed to bring cultures from places like Greece or Syria before the twentieth century, but no one else had heard about it until 1907.
At that point grandiose reports from the Paris-based émigré Russian biologist Élie Metchnikoff began to put yogurt on the Western map. Metchnikoff had concluded that yogurt as consumed by generations of hardy Bulgarian peasants was the secret of a greatly extended life span. The culturing organisms in yogurt, he thought, were in effect microbial policemen that could be deployed to keep the human colon free of crime—i.e., toxins produced by “putrefying” bacteria. These colonic pollutants were the essential cause of aging, but luckily the bacteria that manufactured them could be knocked out by yogurt cultures. Without exposure to the “autointoxicating” products of the wrong germs, presumably everyone could live to the astonishing ages said to be commonplace in rural Bulgaria.
Today most of this scenario looks either oversimplified or positively crackbrained. But Metchnikoff’s claims meant the start of a new Western career for yogurt, far from its places of origin. France was the first center of yogurt boosterism (and still is an important one). But pro-yogurt publicity circulated around the rest of western Europe from Metchnikoff’s lifetime (he died in 1916 at the respectable but scarcely breathtaking age of seventy-one) throughout the 1920s and ’30s. Bulgarian cultures were exported and propagated in various countries. A dogged if not delighted clientele embraced yogurt in the spirit that Evelyn Waugh ascribes to John Beaver’s mother in the opening scene of A Handful of Dust (1934): “She held the carton close to her chin and gobbled with a spoon. ‘Heavens, how nasty this stuff is. I wish you’d take to it, John.’ ”
There is an irony here: Metchnikoff had achieved an accurate enough knowledge of the operative culturing organisms to make possible the scientific commercial manufacture of finished yogurt—something that hadn’t existed in the countries where an incubating batch of yogurt was a daily kitchen miracle, not a standardized retail product to be sold in packages. Its new Western aficionados understood nothing about it but that it was supposed to be good for you, “nasty” or not.
On yogurt’s home territory, people had always eaten it not for health reasons but because it was a beloved food made and handled by well-known methods that controlled the final flavor. Without thinking, people knew how to make yogurt that was sourer, “sweeter” (i.e., less sour), creamier, milkier, thicker, thinner, or variously aligned along other scales of quality. To the early twentieth-century European sophisticates who bought yogurt as an exotic panacea, such niceties were meaningless. They disliked the lactic-acid sourness but assumed that it was a given, not an effect to be heightened or toned down by simple means like adding the starter under slightly altered circumstances (e.g., minute temperature variations) or draining whey at some optimal stage.
Gradually some European—and later, American—devotees began to like the taste of the early commercial yogurts. For those who didn’t, help eventually arrived in the form of sugar.
The Greek-born Spanish entrepreneur Isaac Carasso founded one of the first yogurt-making businesses in Barcelona a few years after Metchnikoff’s death, naming it “Danone” for his son Daniel. During World War II, Daniel Carasso brought a new branch of the family business—which had already expanded into France and elsewhere—to the United States, changing the name to “Dannon.” By this time some European producers were experimentally adding sweetened fruit preserves to yogurt. The American Dannon company, originally a tiny Bronx-based supplier to ethnic communities, adopted this tack in 1947. By the late 1950s sweetened yogurt was making giant strides on both continents.
Different approaches, for instance, “sundae-style” with sweetened fruit on the bottom or “Swiss-style” with the sweetening mixed in, gathered enthusiastic followings. Many—probably most—manufacturers soon took to using skimmed or partly skimmed instead of whole milk, offsetting the lack of body by adding powdered skim milk. The change reduced sweetened Western yogurt’s already tenuous connection with any sort of natural milk flavor but enabled promoters to call it “low-fat” or “fat-free.” Some manufacturers also lengthened the product’s shelf life by pasteurizing it after incubation. Of course, this killed the live cultures that have always been part of yogurt. But since live cultures weren’t (and currently aren’t) mentioned in the FDA’s standards of identity, it didn’t stop anyone from calling the result “yogurt.” At about 1970 a new sales arena opened with the development of frozen yogurt, the most highly sugared avatar yet, which was inaccurately but very successfully promoted as a “lighter,” more healthful alternative to ice cream.
The bigger the business grew, the less it had to do with the yogurt of Bulgaria, Turkey, or anywhere else in the eastern birthplaces of this remarkable food. In effect, yogurt had been turned into a kind of premixed sweet-and-sour pudding or pseudo–ice cream, and whatever conflicted with that image came to be viewed as a defect by makers and consumers alike.
Most real yogurt, for example, “breaks,” or releases whey, if it’s allowed to stand after a spoon is dipped in it. There is a simple reason for this. To dairy chemists, yogurt is technically a fragile semisolid “gel” formed during the culturing process when the lactic-acid content gets high enough to lower the pH of the milk and cause some changes in the shape of the casein micelles. Their surface becomes bumpy and irregular enough to let them link up in a spongy lattice of casein strands holding whey in the interstices of the sponge. The casein and whey remain in this delicate arrangement—somewhere between the original milk structure and the kind of decisive curd precipitation that happens with cheesemaking—as long as the yogurt is left alone. Dip into it with a spoon, and you disturb the unstable gel enough to let whey leak out of the sponge. This harmless change does not affect flavor, and can be simply though temporarily reversed by stirring the whey back in. But because the separating phenomenon (chemists call it “syneresis”) bothered many consumers, manufacturers routinely started adding such fixes of the imaginary flaw as starches, gums, and/or pectin to keep the body of the yogurt intact.
Through all these vicissitudes, plain unflavored yogurt with nothing added retained a scattered following among Western consumers, mostly though not entirely in ethnic enclaves. Then a small but sturdy renaissance began to dawn for real yogurt.
Some of the impetus came from the counterculture of the 1960s, which adopted homemade yogurt as a sort of “lifestyle statement.” Unlike some fashions of the time, this one has continued to gather converts ever since. Today nearly any cookbook claiming to be an all-purpose American kitchen bible will have directions for making yogurt. This certainly doesn’t mean that the general cooking population has a solid acqua
intance with the age-old marvels of well and truly made yogurt, but at the very least we can say that no one now sees home yogurt-making as a hippie affectation.
At the same time, several other developments contributed to a serious upturn in the American fortunes of yogurt. One was a lively outpouring of cookbooks by such writers as Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, and Madhur Jaffrey, celebrating cuisines to which real, fresh, rich, flavorful yogurt was crucial. This encouragement was eventually followed by a modest return of local artisanal dairying and a growing curiosity about a range of fermented foods, as well as tremendous waves of immigration from India and many parts of the old Yogurtistan.
In other words, Americans who really want to explore yogurt now have unprecedented freedom to do so. Without wanting to diminish the importance of other fermented dairy foods, I have to say that for sheer culinary richness and diversity, the basic yogurt traditions of the eastern Mediterranean, the Near East, Central Asia, and India stand apart from anything else.
It should be pointed out that these are not the world’s only yogurt traditions. Yogurt or something close to it flourishes today among the pastoral peoples of East Africa and some sizable ethnic minorities of China. But I don’t know of any work that’s been done to document its uses in either area in terms intelligible to American consumers. On the other hand, people in this country can learn a great deal about the genius that people in India and the old Yogurtistan homelands have brought to cooking with yogurt. The recipes in this section barely scratch the surface.
YOGURT AND HEALTH: A CAUTIONARY VIEW
Health claims on behalf of yogurt have persisted, and undoubtedly helped keep it before the public eye during the transition from a strange new import to a permanent part of the American diet. But I think it’s not easy to disentangle reality from myth. The only claims I’d subscribe to are that plain yogurt can be both a delicious and a nutritious food, that sufferers from moderate lactose intolerance can digest it more readily than unfermented milk, and that it may help people get over gastric upsets.
There does seem to be evidence that when certain bacteria are introduced into the colon they may help keep undesirable counterparts in check. But the basic yogurt-producing organisms (S. thermophilus and L. bulgaricus) aren’t among them, because they cannot survive on their own in the human gut. Just which lactic-acid bacteria can and can’t form viable populations in the colon, and what that implies about choices in fermented dairy products, are questions on which the jury is mostly out. The most plausible claims are for a lactose-digesting organism called Lactobacillus acidophilus, which appears able to live on its own in the colon. On the strength of this capacity, it is often added to yogurt cultures though it is not one of the heat-loving, or thermophilic, bacteria responsible for basic yogurt fermentation. In my opinion, the merits of acidophilus should be debated by people qualified to talk about lactose-digesting problems, not good food.
On the lactose-intolerance question, I’d simply point out that people’s digestive capacities can vary across a wide spectrum and that the amount of lactose in yogurt also can vary a good deal. The fermentation is never carried to the point of changing a hundred percent of the original lactose to lactic acid. But as discussed later on in the basic yogurt recipe, the world’s habitual yogurt eaters have almost invariably finished the culturing process by draining much or most of the whey. This eliminates nearly all the lactic acid and remaining lactose together. Unfortunately, sufferers from very severe lactose intolerance may be affected by even the small amounts found in drained or undrained yogurt; trial and error is the only way to find out. Generally speaking, lactose content is highest in yogurt made from nonfat milk, especially with added nonfat milk solids.
BUYING AND USING PLAIN YOGURT
I have been happy to see the plain-yogurt fan club grow in the last few years as good new versions come on the market. (The preflavored kinds, though hugely popular here, appeal to a different cluster of preferences and aren’t appropriate for any of my recipes.) Savvier shopping has been one result. It starts with careful label reading.
The first thing to look for is the presence of live cultures. Don’t buy anything that doesn’t mention them. The label may say simply, “live active cultures” or list them by name, in which case the ones to look for are Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus. There are brands that list numerous others, but adding more kinds of bacteria doesn’t confer any intrinsic flavor advantage, at least to my taste. If you find that you like yogurt prepared with a large number of different organisms, by all means follow your own preference.
The fewer other ingredients, the better. “Milk,” or “milk and cream,” is all that’s necessary. I avoid everything containing either thickeners (starch, gum, tapioca, pectin) or additives accompanied by health claims (inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides). The additive hardest to avoid is nonfat milk solids, meant to give wan, insubstantial yogurt more body. I’d prefer to see the goal pursued by other means like using better milk in the first place, but sometimes can’t find anything made without this would-be improvement.
Please be aware that real yogurt is not a low-fat or low-calorie food. (On its home territory people not only made it from whole, unhomogenized milk but often reduced the milk by long cooking to enrich the yogurt.) If you have tasted good full-fat yogurt, you will realize how inferior the reduced-fat versions are. As for commercial nonfat yogurt, it is inexcusably awful. Calorie counters and fat-watchers had best treat yogurt as a rich food to be used with discretion, not shorn of its true character. Everyone else should know that the higher the listed fat content, the creamier the yogurt. When possible, look for yogurt from unhomogenized milk, though unfortunately this information isn’t always on the label.
Yogurt is best bought as fresh as possible. It becomes sourer with long sitting. Check expiration dates and try to find younger rather than elderly specimens. Once bought, it will stay fresher longer if you drain the whey as suggested on this page. Some (usually imported) brands will say “strained,” indicating that they already have been partly drained. These are usually creamier and fresher-tasting than ones with all the whey still present.
The range of available brands varies greatly in different parts of the United States. The best are almost invariably more expensive than most of the popular national brands. Small producers often sell their yogurt in local farmers’ markets, and I urge you to explore these before any others. Otherwise, my hands-down favorite is Old Chatham Sheepherding Company yogurt, an advertisement incarnate for the flavor of sheep’s milk. Just about as good (and expensive) is the sheep’s- and goats’-milk yogurt imported from Greece under the brand name Fage Total.
Total also produces a good whole cows’ milk yogurt. But I usually prefer the full-fat cows’-milk yogurts often sold by the quart in Turkish neighborhood groceries, with labels stating that they are made from “whole milk” containing at least 3.5 percent milkfat—a small but quite perceptible improvement over the usual 3.25 percent kind.
I also like the thick, dense buffaloes’-milk yogurt made by the Woodstock Water Buffalo Company of Vermont, though I wish it were unhomogenized and put up in larger containers. My favorite goats’-milk yogurt is the refreshing drinkable Yo-Goat from Coach Farm in New York State. As explained later (this page), goats’-milk yogurt is naturally thinner than that from other animals, a quality that the Yo-Goat people happily embrace instead of trying to disguise it with thickeners as do most other makers.
A final note to cooks: Yogurt curdles on exposure to heat. This doesn’t hurt the flavor, but looks rather unappetizing. Depending on the dish, you may be able to sidestep the problem by warming a sauce through without letting it boil after adding yogurt. Or for a popular Middle Eastern method, mix yogurt with a small amount of flour, cornstarch, or egg white and heat briefly before using it in hot dishes. (In India, people often use chickpea flour.) The usual proportions are about a tablespoon of flour or starch, or 1 egg white, to 4 cups of yogurt. Begin by mixing t
he flour or starch smooth with a little cold water or lightly beating the egg white. Put the yogurt in a saucepan and whisk or stir until it thins. Add the chosen stabilizer and bring the yogurt barely to a boil, stirring. Let it simmer for a few minutes before adding to the rest of the dish.
WALLACHIAN SHEEP WITH SPIRAL HORNS
RECIPES
HOMEMADE YOGURT: SOME THOUGHTS
If you never have made yogurt before, it’s only fair to tell you in advance that what you end up with may not in the least resemble the kinds you’re used to buying—and there’s no reason it should. Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that real yogurt varies widely in natural consistency, depending on factors like the source of the milk.
In the regions I think of as Yogurtistan, the comparatively thin body of unmodified cows’-milk yogurt (as compared to sheep’s or water buffaloes’ milk) isn’t seen as a defect to be got around by adding any of the thickeners frequently put into commercial American yogurt. If people want to thicken yogurt, they do it by subtraction, not addition. Once it is set, they put it in some kind of strainer and leave it until it has lost from a third to half its volume in whey—at least, that’s a usual treatment of cows’-milk yogurt. Pure sheep’s-milk yogurt sets up much thicker because it’s more concentrated to start with, and the pure goats’-milk kind isn’t expected to set up at all; you drink rather than eat it.
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