On Food and Cooking

imaginations of many cultures. The ancient
Indo-Europeans were cattle herders who
moved out from the Caucasian steppes to
settle vast areas of Eurasia around 3000 BCE;
and milk and butter are prominent in the
creation myths of their descendents, from
India to Scandinavia. Peoples of the
Mediterranean and Middle East relied on the
oil of their olive tree rather than butter, but
milk and cheese still figure in the Old
Testament as symbols of abundance and
creation.
The modern imagination holds a very
different view of milk! Mass production
turned it and its products from precious,
marvelous resources into ordinary
commodities, and medical science
stigmatized them for their fat content.
Fortunately a more balanced view of dietary
fat is developing; and traditional versions of
dairy foods survive. It’s still possible to savor
the remarkable foods that millennia of human