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Cheese from Kurdish regions of Iran, Iraq, Türkiye and Syria

Kope cheese (Kurdish jar cheese)Kope

Raw sheep milk, or cow milk in some places, is made into a salted curd that is packed into a clay jar called a kope. The jars are buried in the ground or kept cool, and the cheese ripens for months; studies followed it from 37 to 187 days and judged it best at about 127 days. It turns from salty and rubbery to sweet and cheesy, then bitter and pungent.

Fully documentedCheese37 days – 6.1 monthsFamily: Skin- and pot-ripened cheese family (Tulum, Çömlek)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold practice; the sources found give no amounts.
Raw sheep milk[esmaeilzadeh2025][nowruzi2026]
Salt (curd salting and brining)[esmaeilzadeh2021]
Starternone reported; the raw milk's own microbes

Total time across the recorded steps: 37 days – 6.1 months

Start
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What changes: Raw sheep milk is curdled into a soft curd

Step 1 of 4
Curdle the raw sheep milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Raw sheep milk, or cow milk in some places, is made into a salted curd that is packed into a clay jar called a kope. The jars are buried in the ground or kept cool, and the cheese ripens for months; studies followed it from 37 to 187 days and judged it best at about 127 days. It turns from salty and rubbery to sweet and cheesy, then bitter and pungent. Made in 4 steps over 37 days – 6.1 months. The longest step, bury the jars and ripen, takes 37 days – 6.1 months (Esmaeilzadeh P 2025) and runs at 5–12 °C (Hasanzadeh A 2023).

Key numbers
Main step37 days – 6.1 monthsReported[esmaeilzadeh2025][esmaeilzadeh2021]Bury the jars and ripen
Temperature5–12 °CReported[hasanzadeh2023]Bury the jars and ripen

What makes this one different

Kope is ripened in an earthenware jar buried in the soil, not in a skin, so it ripens cool and slowly. Jar-ripened cheese ends drier and firmer than the same cheese ripened in plastic.

Best ripeness
Cheeses ripened 127 days were judged the most desirable
Jar or plastic
Cheese ripened in jars was firmer and drier than cheese ripened in plastic, which was more acidic

Related ferments

Safety

Kope is made from raw milk. A PCR survey in West Azerbaijan found DNA of Coxiella burnetii, the Q fever agent, in 12.5 % of 240 Kope samples. The survey did not test whether the bacteria were alive. The authors cite work that found little or no viability in PCR-positive dairy products, and also a study that proved live bacteria in raw cheese. They say it is not established that eating cheese causes the infection, but they treat Kope as a risk factor and report disagreement over heat-treating its milk. ANSES names Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli as hazards of raw-milk cheeses and tells pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity to avoid them, apart from cooked pressed kinds such as Gruyère.

Hazards the sources name: Coxiella burnetii (the Q fever agent), whose DNA was detected by PCR in raw-milk Kope cheese from West Azerbaijan.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Kope is traditionally produced in the Kurdish regions of Iran, Iraq, Türkiye and Syria, from raw sheep milk ripened in a jar called a kope (Nowruzi 2026). A 2023 study compared jar and plastic packaging for bovine-milk Kope.

  1. [esmaeilzadeh2021] Esmaeilzadeh P., Ehsani M.R., Mizani M., Givianrad M.H. 2021, Characterization of a traditional ripened cheese, Kurdish Kope, lipolysis, lactate metabolism, the release profile of volatile compounds, and correlations with sensory characteristics, Journal of Food Science 86(8):3303–3321 (abstract)paper
  2. [esmaeilzadeh2025] Esmaeilzadeh P., Mizani M., Ehsani M.R., Givianrad M.H. 2025, Characterization of a traditional ripened cheese, Kurdish Kope cheese, proteolysis, microstructural, and rheological characteristics, Journal of Food Science 90(4):e70107 (abstract)paper
  3. [hasanzadeh2023] Hasanzadeh A., Raftani Amiri Z., Aminifar M. 2023, Evaluation of physicochemical, rheological and microstructure properties of Kope cheese produced from bovine milk in different conditions of ripening, Iranian Journal of Food Science and Technology (FSCT) 20(134):47–60 (English abstract)paper
  4. [nowruzi2026] Nowruzi B., Norouzi R. et al. 2026, Enhancing Kope cheese with phycoerythrin, microbial, physicochemical, sensory, and antioxidant insights, npj Science of Food (introduction)paper
  5. [mokarizadeh2023] Mokarizadeh K., Ownagh A., Tajik H. 2023, Molecular detection of Coxiella burnetii in Kope cheese and cattle milk in West Azerbaijan, Iran, Veterinary Research Forumpaper
  6. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov