HEALTHY AND TASTY
The first person to carry out scientific studies on yoghurt was Pasteur’s assistant, the Russian biologist Metchnikoff, who discovered that it was the product of a chemical reaction caused by two bacteria, ‘Streptococcus thermopilus’ and ‘Thermobacterium bulgaricum’. Yoghurt is made at home by adding a little old yoghurt to milk as a culture. According to the Larousse Gastronomique, however, the ancient Turks made their yoghurt by boiling milk and then storing it for 2-3 days in closed containers made of leather or clay. Again from Larousse Gastronomique we learn that yoghurt first arrived in France in the time of Francois I. During the Ottoman period an Istanbul Jewish doctor is known to have used yoghurt to treat this French king’s intestinal complaint and to have returned to Istanbul without divulging the secret formula. Yoghurt is not only rich in vitamin B, protein and calcium, it is also easy to digest. Medically, it is believed to be very useful for promoting development of the flora needed by the intestines. Although yoghurt spread throughout the world, more precisely to the West, thanks to