🇦🇲 The cattle breeds of Armenia

Cattle in Armenia are best met at the table. Their milk becomes matzoon, butter, cream and a family of brined cheeses eaten daily, while beef goes into basturma and the wheat porridge harissa. Lamb leads the meat dishes, so the cow's chief work is milking rather than meat.

• Cheese was traditionally eaten daily in Armenian households.
• Yeghegnadzor cheese ripens in clay pots buried in the mountains over six months.
• Matzoon, a soured milk, works as sauce and soup base across the cuisine.
• Harissa, a wheat and meat porridge, can be made with beef as well as lamb.
• Basturma is pressed beef coated in the spiced cemen mix.

Cattle in Armenia

Cattle keep a quieter place in Armenia than sheep and goats. Lamb is the meat of the everyday table, so the cow's main work is milking: matzoon, the local soured milk, stands behind many soups and sauces, while butter, cream, buttermilk, yogurt and cheese fill out the dairy shelf. Beef has its own corner, pressed with spices into basturma and simmered with wheat into harissa. Goats share the milking, and some cheeses blend the two milks. The table is shared with neighbours too: Soviet-era cookbooks counted Armenian cooking the oldest of Transcaucasia, it leans on cracked wheat where Georgian dishes lean on maize, and with Iran it shares the habit of simmering meat alongside fruit such as quince or plums.

Regions and communities

Milk traditions carry place names. Around Yeghegnadzor, a steamed cheese is made from the milk of cows or goats, mixed with local greens and packed into clay pots that are buried in mountain soil; it matures for six months or more into a semi-soft, crumbly wheel. Lori cheese is boiled in the manner of halloumi and kept in brine, while chanakh soaks in brine-filled pots. Salting the cheese made sense before refrigeration was common, as the cookbook writer Rose Baboian explained, and it still shapes the cheese shelf.

Milk, butter and beef

Milk is the cow's main gift here. Matzoon does daily duty as a sauce in its own right and as the base of others, thinned into soups and stirred into red jajek with sour cream, beet and garlic. Yogurt soups are everyday fare. Butter, cream and buttermilk sit beside bread and cheese on the ordinary table, and butter enriches pastries and porridges. Cheese is a daily staple, kept by brine: lori, boiled like halloumi; chechil, a smoked string cheese; chanakh, soft and slightly brittle. Beef appears as basturma, pressed meat coated in the cemen spice mix, and in harissa, and pilafs may be served with beef or lamb.

Festivals, fairs and faith

Harissa belongs to celebration. On feast days it was cooked in communal pots, at first in the clay tonir oven and now on stoves, and beef is one of the meats it may hold. One early twentieth century cookbook called it the Armenians' national dish. The church year shapes the kitchen too: during Lent, the fasting season, nuts go into dishes for nourishment and loaves such as glodj, an unleavened bread, were baked for the time.