Adjective
Pronunciation: kehm’-eh-lohk nay-see’-shoh
Sweet-sour. This term complements kemelok nodua (sweet-bitter).  

This compound term speaks to shifts in taste as foods move from the tip of the tongue, where sweet is registered, to the back of the tongue, where it registers sourness. Equal quantities of salt and sugar mixed together is kemelok nesiicho. Kule naoto, an often preferred early stage of milk fermentation, can become kemelok nesiicho four or five months after the animal’s lactation ends. The sweetness comes from the sweetness of lactic fermentation and the sour from acidic fermentation.  

Other foods that have the complexity of kemelok nesiicho include certain kinds of oranges and the local fruits morron (fruit from the mountains), nadonder (looks like a cucumber and you eat the stem), loilei (fruit of the euphorbia used for fences, a favorite of both goats and people, also medicinal if one has the flu), and mpachach (a small plant with tiny pineapple-shaped fruits).

See also the related term kemelok nodua.

“Milk from which fat has been removed. Put in a bowl, shake the bowl, and then remove all the fat. The milk that is left in the bowl tastes at the same time sweet and sour. Kamanang’ is the name of that milk. Ngorno is what rises to the top. Tastes fatty. Used to give weaning childen. Take ngorno, put in a pot, and cook it until it turns brown, and that fat is used on any food. Stored in a calabash covered with skin, hollow with skin at both ends. Keeps for one season. Don’t prepare the container, just fill. Lkisiich is ghee. Lkisiich is the end product of ngorno, used medicinally for children, especially if they have a deep cough. Ngorno does not stay more than 2 to 3 months. When you see the upper covering changing covering and then use it to clean your own milk container. Similar for nyapoor container. Last time has seen it is with her mother — They are the last age who know this food. The man who is 101 said tasted last time he was married, around 1945. Nyatio is the container to separate and shake the milk. Wooden with skin. Why stopped making it so long ago? What changed? Civilization. Now can get the steel containers. People in the deep country might still make it but these people have been around Wamba for a long time.” — Robin Leparsanti, Longhiro Ledukere in conversation with William Rubel, April 1, 2016.

Return to Milk Taste and Texture terms.

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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