Dairy
Mongolian Horse
B tier
Mongolian horses are small, tough steppe animals whose mare milk is the classic base for airag (fermented horse milk), a national drink of Mongolia. Fresh milk is translucent-white, sweet, and low-fat; after churn-fermentation it becomes effervescent, sour-sweet, and mildly alcoholic. Summer milking camps still define pastoral calendars on the steppe. Cheese is uncommon from pure mare milk, but airag and related dried products are everyday foods. Bottled pasteurised mare milk appears in Ulaanbaatar specialty shops. Flavour of fresh milk is delicate and grassy; fermented forms dominate culinary identity far more than drinking it straight.
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Characteristics
Preparations
Traits
History
Steppe nomads milked horses and fermented the milk into early airag-type drinks.
Mongol imperial culture treated fermented mare milk as a staple and ceremonial beverage.
State dairies experimented with larger-scale mare milk collection.
Urban demand and tourism sustained commercial airag and bottled mare milk.