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(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 lactosetolerance (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 forsoups in lieu of meat, or went into the cerealporridges 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. Thewhey 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 ofsour 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 ofbacteria with slightly different flavor effects are likely to work their will on milk either spontaneously or through inoculation. To produce what traditionalyogurt 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 patienceyou 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. Becausecows’ milk separates more quickly and fully on standing thangoats’ milk (though not as readily aswater 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.
    Northern ideas aboutbutter diverged sharply from those in the two older milking zones. In both India and theDiverse Sources lands, butter was commonly churned from whole-milk yogurt. (It was seldom made from anything but cows’ or buffaloes’ milk, because producing butter from goats’ milk with