Kaymak

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Kaymak from Montenegro
Kaymak of Turkey

Kaymak or kajmak (Bulgarian and Russian Каймак , Croatian Vrhnje , Turkish kaymak ) is a milk product made from cow's milk , buffalo milk , sheep's milk or goat's milk ; Cow's milk is preferred in today's Bulgaria and Serbia, whereas buffalo milk or sheep's milk is used in Turkey and other eastern countries. The milk is heated for several hours after milking . The top layer of cream that forms during heating is then skimmed off in several steps.

It is actually layered cream. It is stored cool and used as a snack or side dish , both for sweets such as baklava and for hearty dishes such as Ćevapi . You can buy artisanal kaymak at markets, but it is also industrially manufactured and packaged. Clotted Cream is a similar product from England. English travelers as well as a letter to the editor in an English scientific magazine from 1869 pointed to the correspondence of Kaymak with clotted cream as early as the nineteenth century .

The term comes from Old Turkish and means 'fatty substance floating on the surface of heated milk'. In Greek , the foreign word kaymaki refers to layered cream on the one hand, but also milk foam in general. Likewise in Bulgarian , where today kajmak refers to layered cream or cream as well as the foam that is formed during the preparation of coffee or cappuccino , for example .

Kaymak is used both in the cuisine of Turkey and in some national cuisines of the Balkans, as well as in various countries in the Orient and the Middle East .

Testimonials from travel reports

  1. The German writer Christian August Fischer (1771–1829) was probably in Constantinople before 1800 . In 1824, his volume of memoirs, Hyacinthen pulled in my dungeon, dedicated a chapter to a visit to Turkey under the title “The Epicurean of Constantinople”. It contains a detailed description of the kaymak: “Kaimack means something like cream skin. The milk is allowed to boil and from time to time the thick fatty skin that forms is removed. These are then arranged in layers, each of them sprinkled heavily with sugar, then pressed into fine, white-glazed pots and sent out like that. The best Kaimak comes from Scutari ; but it is a very difficult to digest dish. "
  2. The diplomat William Turner (1792–1867), who had worked at the British Embassy in Constantinople since 1811, undertook an extensive journey through Palestine, Egypt and Greece in 1815. On his return to Great Britain (1816) he wrote a three-volume travelogue about this trip, which was published in London in 1820. In the second volume of this travel description we find a short note on the Kaymak, written in Akko and dated April 9, 1815: “ Milk, I am delighted to find, abounds in Acre, even that of cows (for the milk of goats is most common in Syria), so that I am revelling in Yaourt and Kaimac: the latter is a preparation of coagulated milk, not unlike our Devonshire clotted cream. ”(German:“ I am delighted to see that milk is in abundance in Akko, even cow's milk (because otherwise goat's milk is most common in Syria), so I indulge in yoghurt and Kaymak, the latter is a preparation made from curdled milk, not unlike our clotted cream from Devonshire . ")
  3. Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Stürmer (1792-1853) stayed in 1816 during a trip to Constantinople in Aytos, Bulgaria (at that time part of the Ottoman Empire). There he was served an egg dish in a tavern, which he describes as follows: “A rice soup was served; then an egg dish which I found so excellent that I believed the cause of it could not only be subjective in my ravenous appetite, but must also be objectively based on a special method of preparation. I inquired about it; I was told that instead of the butter, as is usually the case, Kaimac had been added. This is milk that is so condensed through long boiling - I believe 20 hours - that it can be cut. You usually enjoy them with sugar and other ingredients. "
  4. The English poet and traveler Julia Pardoe (from Yorkshire, 1806-1862) was in Constantinople in 1836 and later reported that Kaymak was sold on the local "Confectmarkt". In her book Views of the Bosphorus and Constantinopel's (English original edition: The Beauties of the Bosphorus , 1839) Pardoe writes that “Kaimac” is “curdled milk” and states that “in the lush Oriente” there is hardly any “ a finer dish ”. Then she says: “Her name Kaimac means 'the highest excellence' in the Turkish language and shows how much people here love this delicacy. It is a pleasure to see how people rush to the table on which it is being displayed for sale. "
  5. The Russian traveler M. Kittara stayed in a Kyrgyz camp in July 1846 . His report on this, which first appeared in German in 1850 under the title Ein Kirgisischer Tui and was later printed in other publications, contains the following passage: “The tea was, as usual, very diluted and then placed on an old presentation plate [ ...] Two of the cups were provided with copper tea spoons, the curved shape, cloudy appearance and black and yellow spots of long, unclean use, but in the other two cups, as there were no spoons, were freshly cut from wood as a surrogate Shovel placed. In addition, there was a moderately large bowl with crushed sugar and a large vessel full of kaimak on the presentation plate. This is the name given to a dish that the Kyrgyz people consider to be a main treat and consists of boiled cream that has become extremely thick, almost buttery, and is covered with a skin that has formed during cooking. The Kaimak is very tasty but so fat that it would be better to use it as your own food and not as an addition to tea. "
  6. In the third volume of his travel book, published in 1851, the English cleric Henry Christmas (1811–1868) also mentions Kaymak in the chapter on Turkish desserts and sweets. There it says: “ One favorite dish is composed of milk thickened and sweetened, with some aromatic flavoring, and small pieces of the breasts or wings of chickens imbedded in it; this is seen filling innumerable small pans on the shopboard of the capital, alternating with a sort of pancake made of flour and honey, which is eaten with kaimac , or clotted cream; Preparations of transparent sugar are sold by itinerant venders, whose trade is a profitable one. ”
  7. The French illustrator Théophile Deyrolle (1844–1923) toured Georgia and Armenia in 1863 on behalf of the Paris Société de Géographie . His detailed and illustrated report appeared in many sequels from 1869 in the French magazine Le Tour du Monde - Nouveau Journal des Voyages . Globus magazine published a German short version of it in several parts, which was printed under the title “In Turkish-Armenia”. In the third part of the German version (1876) the following can be read: “Deyrolle's night quarters in Tschewerme, a village of 40 houses, was one of the best that he encountered on his entire trip [...] He was offered a place as soon as he arrived excellent dish Kaimak and wonderful white honey. Kaimak, along with ya'urt or sour milk, is the main food of the people in these abundant mountains; it is thick, fat cream, which is left over after a good portion of milk in a copper vessel is tepid for a few hours. ”In another article published in Globus in 1875 , which is also based on Deyrolles' travelogue, Kaymak is also mentioned : “Beyond Gümüsch Chane, Deyrolle spoke to a pretty monastery [...] Below the church are the agricultural buildings; The flocks of goats and sheep give excellent milk, from which butter and cheese are made, then cream and cheese; therefore such a homestead is called Kaïmackli. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Alan Eaton Davidson : The Oxford Companion to Food . Ed .: Tom Jaine. 3. Edition. Oxford University Press , New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-104072-6 , keyword “kaymak” (English).
  2. ^ Letter to the editor . In: Notes & Queries . tape IV , no. 86 . London August 21, 1869, p. 166 (English): "The representative of clotted cream is called kaimac, and is prepared from the milk of the common cow, or buffalo cow."
  3. ↑ Kaymak in a Turkish etymological dictionary
  4. ^ Alan Eaton Davidson : The Oxford Companion to Food . Ed .: Tom Jaine. 3. Edition. Oxford University Press , New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-104072-6 , keyword “Serbia” (English).
  5. ↑ Christian August Fischer: Hyacinths pulled in my dungeon . Sauerländer, Frankfurt am Main 1824, p. 75 .
  6. ^ William Turner: Journal of a Tour in the Levant . tape 2 . London 1820, p. 115 (English).
  7. ↑ German biography: Stürmer, Karl Freiherr von - German biography. Retrieved October 5, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Ludwig Freiherr von Stürmer: Sketches of a trip to Constantinople in the last months of 1816 . Ed .: Joseph Goluchowski. Konrad Adolph Hartleben, Pesth (Budapest) 1817, p. 184 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  9. ↑ Julia Pardoe: Views of the Bosphorus and Constantinople . G. Virtue; BS Berendson, London / Hamburg 1853, p. 36 .
  10. ↑ MI Kittara: A Kyrgyz Tui. According to the Russian of Mr. MI Kittara . In: Archives for Scientific Customer of Russia . tape 8 . Berlin 1850, p. 450 .
  11. ↑ A Kyrgyz feast . In: H. Kletke (Ed.): New travel pictures. Sketches from nature and human life. For instruction and entertainment for the more mature youth collected u. published . Julius Springer, Berlin 1855, p. 159-160 .
  12. ^ Georg Hartwig: Ethnographic Photographs. II. The Kyrgyz . In: WO von Horn (Ed.): Die Maje. A people's paper for young and old in the German fatherland . tape 7 . Julius Riedner Verlagshandlung, Wiesbaden 1864, p. 189 .
  13. ^ Henry Christmas: The Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean, Including a Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia . tape III . Richard Bentley, London 1851, p. 87 (English).
  14. ↑ In Turkish Armenia. III. In: Richard Kiepert (Ed.): Globus. Illustrated magazine for country and ethnology . tape XXIX , no. 24 . Braunschweig 1876, p. 373 .
  15. ↑ From Trebizond to Erzerum. II. In: Karl Andree (Ed.): Globus . tape XXVII , no. 15 . Braunschweig 1875, p. 232 .