> In 1690, one British visitor to Ireland noted that the natives ate and drank milk "above twenty several sorts of ways and what is strangest for the most part

> In 1690, one British visitor to Ireland noted that the natives ate and drank milk "above twenty several sorts of ways and what is strangest for the most part love it best when sourest." He was referring to bainne clabair, which translates as "thick milk," and was probably somewhere between just straight-up old milk and sour cream. Today, "bainne clabair" ("soured milk" according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clabber_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clabber_(food)) is called clabber. It's basically a kind of very acidic yogurt made with mesophilic (room temperature) fermentation by the lactic acid bacteria that are naturally present in raw milk. You just leave a jar of raw milk out for the night and in the morning, you enjoy your clabber. Or get food poisoning, if you're unlucky :P Edit - you can also make clabber, more safely, with kefir and pasteurised milk. Kefir normally makes a kind of very runny yogurt but, depending on the milk, you can get a very firm yogurt instead. In my experience, non-homogenised milk of good quality (preferrably from grass-fed cows) and, interestingly, UHT milk, clabber well. UHT milk kind of makes more sense: it's already undergone the heat treatment necessary to make yogurt and all it's missing is the acid produced by lactic acid bacteria. Normally, this is done relatively quickly by thermophilic bacteria (Lactobacilus Bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus) at 45 degrees C, but a longer fermentation at room temperature with mesophilic strains can have the same effect. I, anyway, have made plenty of kefir-clabber this way, and also a few cheeses. If you collect the clabber and drain it in a cheesecloth, you can then form it and even age it. I've aged a couple of (tiny) wheels for up to four months and they were not bad, just a bit strong.