Bulgarian yoghurt: the microbe named after a country

About Bulgarian yoghurt: the microbe named after a country

By the ULTIMATE Sofia Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Bulgarian yoghurt, kiselo mlyako (“sour milk”), is thick, tangy and eaten with almost everything. In 1905 a young Bulgarian scientist, Stamen Grigorov, identified the bacterium that makes it, and it has carried the country’s name ever since: Lactobacillus bulgaricus.

Kiselo mlyako

Bulgarians have made yoghurt from cow’s, sheep’s and buffalo milk for centuries, traditionally in clay pots. Sheep’s milk yoghurt is especially rich and creamy, and you will find several kinds in any Sofia supermarket.

Stamen Grigorov

In 1905, working in Geneva, the medical student Stamen Grigorov, from the village of Studen Izvor in western Bulgaria, identified the rod-shaped bacterium responsible for Bulgarian yoghurt. It was named Lactobacillus bulgaricus. His native village now has a small museum of yoghurt.

Bulgaria is the only country with a microbe named after it in every yoghurt.

Yoghurt and long life

Soon afterwards, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ilya Mechnikov linked the long lives of Bulgarian villagers to the yoghurt they ate, and Bulgarian yoghurt became famous around the world.

On the table

Yoghurt appears everywhere: in tarator, a cold summer soup with cucumber, dill, walnuts and garlic; in snezhanka (“Snow White”), a thick yoghurt salad with cucumber; with honey and walnuts for breakfast; and in ayran, a salty yoghurt drink.

Our advice: order tarator with lunch on a hot day, try snezhanka with grilled meats, and buy a pot of sheep’s milk yoghurt to taste the real thing.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Bulgarian yoghurt: the microbe named after a country before you go.