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YogurtYoghurt or yogurt, or less commonly yoghourt, joghurt or yogourt (see spelling differences), is a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. Any sort of milk may be used to make yoghurt, but modern production is dominated by cow's milk. It is the fermentation of milk sugar (lactose) into lactic acid that gives yoghurt its gel-like texture and characteristic tang. It is often sold in a fruit, vanilla, or chocolate flavour, but can also be unflavoured. There is evidence of cultured milk products being produced as food for at least 4,500 years, since the 3rd millennium BC. The Bulgars (also Hunno-Bulgars), a Turkic-speaking people from Aryian-Pamirian origin, migrated into Europe starting from the 2nd century AD, eventually settling on the Balkans by the end of the 7th century AD. The earliest yoghurts were probably spontaneously fermented, perhaps by wild bacteria residing inside goat skin bags used for transportation. Yoghurt remained primarily a food of India, Central Asia, Western Asia, South Eastern Europe and Central Europe until the 1900s, when a Russian biologist named Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov theorized that heavy consumption of yoghurt was responsible for the unusually long lifespans of Bulgarian peasants. Believing Lactobacillus to be essential for good health, Mechnikov worked to popularize yoghurt as a foodstuff throughout Europe. It fell to a Spanish entrepreneur named Isaac Carasso to industrialise the production of yoghurt. In 1919 he started a commercial yoghurt plant in Barcelona, naming the business Danone after his son — better known in the United States as 'Dannon'. Yoghurt with added fruit marmalade was invented (and patented) in 1933 in dairy Radlická Mlékárna in Prague. The original intention of this combination was to protect yoghurt better against decay. Yoghurt was first commercially produced and sold in the United States in 1929 by Armenian immigrants, Rose and Sarkis Colombosian, whose family business later became Colombo Yogurt. The word derives from the Turkish yoğurt (pronounced [jɔˈurt]) deriving from the adjective 'yoğun', which means "dense" and "thick", or from the verb yoğurmak, which means "to knead" (possibly "yoğurmak" the verb originally meant "to make dense"), a reference to how yoghurt is made. The letter ğ is silent between back vowels in Modern Turkish, but was formerly pronounced as a voiced velar fricative [ɣ]. English pronunciation varies in different regions according to the local accent but common pronunciations include /ˈjɒgət/ and /ˈjoʊgɚt/. Yoghurt making involves the introduction of specific "friendly" bacteria into milk under controlled (very carefully in industrial settings) temperature and environmental conditions. The bacteria ingest the natural milk sugars and release lactic acid as a waste product; the increased acidity, in turn, causes the milk proteins to tangle into a solid mass, (curd, denature). The increased acidity (pH=4–5) also prevents the proliferation of other potentially pathogenic bacteria. To be named yoghurt, the product should at least contain the bacteria Streptococcus salivarius ssp thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus (official name Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus). Often these are co-cultured with other lactic acid bacteria for either taste or health effects (probiotics). These include L. acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei and Bifidobacterium species. Check out the following recipes that are tagged "Yogurt":
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