🧑🤝🧑 Icelanders
Descendants of Scandinavian settlers on the North Atlantic island of Iceland; their age-old dairy product is thick skyr.
Icelanders are descendants of Scandinavian settlers who came to the island in the 9th century and brought cows, sheep and goats with them. On an island with a harsh climate and short summers, milk and fish were the basis of the diet for centuries.
The best-known product is skyr, which has been made for more than a thousand years. Traditionally the cream was skimmed off and the skimmed milk was soured by adding a little old skyr as a starter, then strained through cloth. The result was a thick, dense, protein-rich product, technologically close to a fresh cheese. The whey from skyr, called mysa, was drunk and used to sour and preserve meat and other foods for the winter.
Today skyr is made industrially and is popular far beyond Iceland. Butter, milk and skyr remain an important part of Icelandic cuisine.
What it includes
- Traditional products
How it connects to milk
🧑🤝🧑 Icelanders ← among ← 🥣 Skyr → made from → 🥛 Milk
Links
- Where they live
- 🌍 Northern Europe
- Traditional products
- 🥣 Skyr
Frequently asked questions
What is skyr?
A thick Icelandic cultured product made from skimmed milk, technologically close to a fresh cheese.
Is skyr a yogurt or a cheese?
It is sold as yogurt, but technically it is closer to a fresh cheese: it is traditionally strained of its whey.
What is mysa?
The whey from skyr; it was drunk and used to sour and preserve food.
Similar
Sources
- Spoilage Potential of Contaminating Yeast Species during Cold Storage of Skyr. Foods, 2022
- Faccia et al. Milk Products from Minor Dairy Species: A Review. Animals, 2020