Blog and website for William Rubel, author and cook specializing in traditional cuisines

I took this photograph in February, 2002, near Wamba, Kenya. It is a photograph of a Samburu girl holding a milk container. Dairy containers must be sterile. In the semi-arid desert of Northern Kenya there isn’t enough water to allow for thorough washing of containers. Instead, the container is sterilized by heating a small amount of water to the boiling point with burning sticks. As the Samburu, who are semi-nomadic pastoralists, live in small settlements near their cattle they don’t have refrigeration. The burning sticks leave a residue that include compounds that function as a preservative. Smoke cured milks sours more slowly than milk stored in unsmoked containers. But what I find most interesting, and what is the subject of my ongoing study of this milk, is that smoke cured milk is more flavorful and more aromatic than milk taken straight from the cow, goat, sheep, or camel, the animals most commonly found in Samburu herds. In many ways the aesthetics of Samburu smoked milk make it one of the world’s most complex foodways. I will begin publishing my research into Samburu milk beginning with a paper at the July 2010 Oxford Symposium on Food and Drink. I am working on this project with Elly Loldepe and Jane Levi.