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EveryCow

Milk and cream

Smetana

Eastern European soured cream, spooned into borscht and onto blini, pelmeni and pancakes.

Smetana is soured cream from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and their neighbours. Cream is ripened with lactic cultures until thick and gently sour. It is richer than most Western sour cream and goes into or onto many dishes: a white spoonful in red borscht, a dollop on blini and pelmeni, and in the dough and fillings of many pies.

What goes in

Cream: 77%77%Lactic cultures: 8%Cool room: 15%15%3parts
  • Cream1077%, Skimmed from fresh milk.
  • Lactic cultures18%, Or a spoon of the last smetana.
  • Cool room215%, A day or so.

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 Leave fresh milk to stand and skim the cream.
  2. Step 2: Ferment Stir in a spoon of the last smetana.
  3. Step 3: Set Leave it in a cool room until thick and sour.
  4. Step 4: Serve Serve a spoonful in borscht or with blini.
  5. Cream: 77%77%Lactic cultures: 8%Cool room: 15%15%
    Finished Smetana, by share.

From the top of the milk

The name comes from a Slavic word for sweeping off, as smetana was the cream skimmed from the top of milk left to stand. In farm households the milk soured in a cool place and the cream was lifted after a day or two. Smetana was sold in markets by weight, from big bowls, and buyers judged it by how firmly a spoon stood in it.

At the table

Borscht is rarely served without it. Blini at Maslenitsa, the butter week before Orthodox Lent, are eaten with smetana, butter, caviar or jam. Syrniki, fried pancakes of tvorog, come with smetana and jam. In Czech and Slovak cooking smetana is stirred into sauces such as svíčková. It is also beaten with sugar to fill layered honey cakes.

Where it is used

BorschtBlini and pelmeniPies and baking

The breeds behind it

Belarus RedNative dairy breed of Belarus.Ukrainian GreyUkraine's ancient grey steppe breed.Holstein FriesianMain dairy breed of the region's large farms.

Also part of it, and being written: Kostroma cattle (Russian dual-purpose breed of the upper Volga.).

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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