Noun.
Pronunc. n-yorn’-nyoh.
Curds; butter.

Ngorno has two meanings. It means curds, and it also means butter. The curd/butter concept is linked in the Northern Maa dialect, as butter is made from churned curd. In addition to making butter from curds, when ngorno is cooked for 30 minutes to an hour or so (shorter time on a wood fire, longer time on a charcoal fire, reflecting differences in the fire’s heat), it makes nkeisiich (ricotta).

One Samburu friend tells that when the nkeisiich is cooked longer, to the point it begins to caramelize, then it becomes ranganya. This will be related to the Norwegian whey cheeses of gjetost (when made from goat milk) and mysost (when made from cow milk). Like these Scandinavian cheeses, ranganya is sweet. Its most common use was as a treat for children. (This statement is properly past tense, as it has been a long time since there was enough milk to produce a surplus for processing into longer-keeping products.)

It is important to note that you are not able to recreate the flavor and aroma of any Samburu milk product unless you start with milk that has been infused with a botanical that was burned to suffuse the inside surface of the wooden lmala with a fine film of soot residue. Milk that is allowed to sour and clabber inside the lmala retains a taste and aroma profile that traces back to the wood used in the milk preparation. If there is further storage, of a processed milk product, such as for ngorno (butter), then it stored in a container that has been cleaned with cow urine and then rinsed with water.

See Recipe – Ngorno.

Return to Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel.

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Published by William Rubel

I am an author who writes about traditional food and foodways. My book, The Magic of Fire (2002) is about hearth cooking. I have written an introductory history of bread, Bread, a global history (2011) and am currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press. Other areas of interest include wild mushrooms, and specifically the treatment of Amanita muscaria in the historic record. I also write about Early Modern British Gardens, and for a more general audience, I write for Mother Earth News on bread, gardening, and more. I have an ongoing research project into the smoke-cured fermented milk of the Kenyan Samburu tribe. I am a co-director of the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, Lengusaka. I am the founding editor (1972) of Stone Soup, the magazine of writing and art by young people.

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