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EveryCow

Curd and fermented milk

Ryazhenka

Milk baked slowly until caramel brown, then fermented into a mild, creamy drink of Ukraine and Russia.

Ryazhenka is milk that has been baked at low heat for hours until it turns a soft caramel brown, then cultured like yoghurt. It is thick, mild and faintly sweet, with a taste of toffee from the long baking. It comes from Ukraine and is common across Russia and Belarus, where it is drunk at breakfast and in the evening.

What goes in

Whole milk: 77%77%Cream: 15%15%Sour cream or culture: 8%3parts
  • Whole milk1077%, Baked for hours.
  • Cream215%, Added in many recipes.
  • Sour cream or culture18%, Starts the fermentation.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Milk Pour milk and a little cream into a clay pot.
  2. Step 2: Cook Bake it in a low oven for several hours until it turns caramel brown.
  3. Step 3: Ferment Cool it to warm and stir in a spoon of sour cream.
  4. Step 4: Set Leave it to set in a warm place.
  5. Step 5: Serve Chill and drink by the glass.
  6. Whole milk: 77%77%Cream: 15%15%Sour cream or culture: 8%
    Finished Ryazhenka, by share.

The stove

Ryazhenka began in village homes with the large masonry stove that heated the house. Milk in a clay pot, often with some cream, was left in the cooling oven overnight. The long, gentle heat browned the milk and gave it a skin. A spoonful of sour cream was then stirred in and the pot was left to ferment.

Baked milk

Baked milk alone, toplyonoye moloko in Russian, is also drunk. Varenets, a related Russian product, is baked milk fermented in a similar way. The browning comes from slow reactions between milk sugars and proteins, the same that colour toast and caramel. Both are sold across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and often drunk with bread or a sweet bun.

Where it is used

Breakfast drinkEvening glassBaking

The breeds behind it

Ukrainian GreyThe old grey cattle of Ukrainian villages.

Also part of it, and being written: Kostroma cattle (Russian dual-purpose breed.), Belarus Red (Dairy breed of Belarus.).

More on EveryCow

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Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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