On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen ( PDFDrive ) 25

bovine in tropical Asia.Bubalus bubalis was
domesticated as a draft animal in
Mesopotamia around 3000BCE, then taken to
the Indus civilizations of present-day
Pakistan, and eventually through India and
China.Thistropicalanimalissensitivetoheat
(it wallows in water to cool down), so it
proved adaptable to milder climates. The
Arabs brought buffalo to the Middle East
around 700CE, and in the Middle Ages they
wereintroducedthroughoutEurope.Themost
notable vestige of that introduction is a
population approaching 100,000 in the
Campagna region south of Rome, which
supplies the milk for true mozzarella cheese,
mozzarella di bufala. Buffalo milk is much
richer than cow’s milk, so mozzarella and
Indianmilkdishesareverydifferentwhenthe
traditionalbuffalomilkisreplacedwithcow’s
milk.
TheYak The third important dairy bovine is


the yak,Bos grunniens. This long-haired,
bushy-tailed cousin of the common cow is
beautifully adapted to the thin, cold, dry air
and sparse vegetation of the Tibetan plateau
and mountains of central Asia. It was
domesticated around the same time as
lowland cattle. Yak milk is substantially
richer in fat and protein than cow milk.

Tibetans in particular make elaborate use of
yakbutterandvariousfermentedproducts.
The Goat The goat and sheep belong to the
“ovicaprid” branch of the ruminant family,
smalleranimalsthatareespeciallyathomein
mountainouscountry.Thegoat,Caprahircus,
comes from a denizen of the mountains and
semidesert regions of central Asia, and was
probably the first animal after the dog to be
domesticated, between 8000 and 9000BCE in
present-dayIranandIraq.Itisthehardiestof
the Eurasian dairy animals, and will browse
just about any sort of vegetation, including