🌍 Central Europe

Central Europe — from Germany and the Alps to Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary — is a land of mixed peasant farming, where almost every household kept cows. Archaeology shows that milk was processed here by the very first farmers: traces of dairy fat on pottery of the Linear Pottery culture date to about the 6th millennium BC.

The main everyday product is fresh curd cheese (quark, twaróg). It goes into pies, dumplings, sweet fillings and spreads. Sour cream is added to soups and sauces, and butter is the basis of baking. In the Alps cattle are driven up to high mountain pastures in summer, and the dairies there make hard cheeses; in the Carpathian part of the region they make sheep’s bryndza.

Today this is one of the most developed dairy regions in the world, but peasant recipes — curd cheese pies, home-made cheese — are still part of the cuisine.