SC - Persian milk?

[cclark at vicon.net]

Hi. I'm back for the moment (finals are over), but the list is filling my in
box so fast that I'll probably drop out again before long.

I'm working on interpreting some recipes from al-Baghdadi, but there's a
little problem with the "Persian milk."

The translator (A. J. Arberry) suggests some sort of curdled milk. But
there's this one recipe (madira) that says to take the other stuff out of
the pot and then boil Persian milk with mint and salted lemon and then put
the rest back in. Now with some lemons in, even fresh milk might tend to
separate at a full boil, and something like plain yogurt would certainly do
so - unless the original word could mean "simmer," rather than "boil." But
then it says "when the boiling has subsided," which suggests that maybe it's
really supposed to boil. There's another recipe ('ukaika) which says to add
"Persian milk" to cooked spiced meat, bring to a boil, and then cook over a
gentle flame until the milk has "coagulated." Maybe the original word meant
"thickened?" If it's supposed to be yogurt, it's kind of coagulated even
before it starts cooking.

Based on these recipes, I'm inclined to suppose that "Persian milk" meant
either some kind of stabilized yogurt or other sour milk product (with
starch added) or else some very creamy milk product that would not separate
readily due to the high fat content. So far, a comparison to a few modern
recipes suggests that either creamy milk or yogurt could have some of the
same uses as "Persian milk."

Does anyone have any useful information on Persian milk? Other period
cookbooks that use the term, other information about the words, evidence of
its use in modern times, boiling experiments, information about Arabic words
for "boil" and "simmer," etc.?

Henry of Maldon/Alex Clark