Dairy Products
That dastardly cooks mailing list has got me translating food recipes again. Qimin Yaoshu has a few recipes for three dairy products. One, 酪 lào means something like "curdled milk" and is a variety of yogurt based on the recipe. The next, 乾酪 gānlào "dry lao " is something we don't have a good western analogue for, but is basically dried milk skins. Ever make pudding and peel off the dried skin? Like that. Finally, we have a recipe for what is probably butter, 酥 sū. It's interesting that the dry lao doesn't add salt, like I would expect for something intended to keep. It's also pretty funny how specific the author is about using dung as your fuel. Which you should be sure to gather ahead of time! These recipes are in the middle of the chapter on raising sheep. The recipe for lao actually starts off with a page or so on how and when to milk your livestock - they weren't killing calves or lambs it seems, so the timing on when to milk