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Fermented milk from Slovakia

Žinčica (sheep-whey drink)žinčica

Žinčica is a lightly sour drink made at shepherds' huts from the ewe's-milk whey left after making lump cheese (hrudka), the raw material of bryndza. The whey is heated until its proteins float up as a thick layer (urda), which is skimmed off, stirred, cooled and left covered overnight to sour.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Žinčica itself.

DocumentedFermented milk

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedShepherd's-hut practice with no fixed amounts; the whey from each day's cheese make is used.
Ewe's-milk wheyLeft in the pot after the lump cheese is lifted out[ludovakultura][fermdb]
No added starterLactic bacteria from the cheese make and the vessels sour it[fermdb]
Starterspontaneous (lactic flora carried over from the cheese make); older žinčica is mixed in for a sour batch
Start
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What changes: The whey left after lifting out the sheep's cheese stays in the kettle

Step 1 of 5
Collect the whey from the cheese make
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: ewe's-milk whey.

Flavour
sweet whey
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

Žinčica is a lightly sour drink made at shepherds' huts from the ewe's-milk whey left after making lump cheese (hrudka), the raw material of bryndza. The whey is heated until its proteins float up as a thick layer (urda), which is skimmed off, stirred, cooled and left covered overnight to sour.

Key numbers
Temperature90–95 °CReported[fermdb]Heat the whey until the proteins rise
AciditypH up to 5.2Reported[fermdb]Cover and sour until the next day

What makes this one different

Žinčica is the drink side of the sheep-cheese make. Unlike bryndza or the lump cheese it is made from the whey, and unlike Icelandic sýra it is heated first and drunk within a day rather than kept for months.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Sour žinčicaMade by mixing in older, sourer žinčica.
  • Seknutá žinčica (Šariš and Spiš)The urda is left in, which gives a curdled, lumpy drink.
  • ŽentycaA dialect name for the same whey drink (sk.wikipedia).

Safety

FermDB has the whey heated to 90–95 °C before it sours, then soured to pH 5.2 or below and drunk cooled. Lauková et al. 2020 tested 7 enterococcus isolates from žinčica from farms in central Slovakia. All were hemolysis-negative and none had the cytolysin A gene, but five carried another virulence gene (gelE, agg or esp) and four formed biofilm. The abstract covers enterococci only, not other pathogens.

Hazards the sources name: Enterococcus faecium and E. faecalis (7 isolates from žinčica; the virulence gene gelE was found in two E. faecium strains, and agg in one and esp in two E. faecalis strains; none carried the cytolysin A gene; four E. faecium strains formed biofilm; the authors call the virulence genes mostly absent, the isolates hemolysis-negative and mostly antibiotic-susceptible).

History and sources

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

Žinčica was made at sheep huts across the Slovak Carpathians; shepherds drank it every day and used it as a remedy for lung and stomach complaints (Encyclopedia of Slovak folk culture). The rest was fed to dogs and pigs (sk.wikipedia).

  1. [ludovakultura] Stoličná R. 2017, Žinčica, Tradičná ľudová kultúra Slovenska slovom a obrazom (electronic encyclopedia, Centre for Traditional Folk Culture), citing Podolák J., Tradičné ovčiarstvo na Slovensku, 1982book
  2. [laukova2020] Lauková A., Kandričáková A., Bino E. et al. 2020, Some safety aspects of enterococci isolated from Slovak lactic acid dairy product žinčica, Folia Microbiol. 65(1):79–85, doi:10.1007/s12223-019-00703-5 (abstract)paper
  3. [fermdb] FermDB (Bokulich lab, ETH Zurich), FermDB_data.tsv, row Zincica (description drawn from Lauková et al. 2020), CC BY 4.0web
  4. [wp-sk] sk.wikipedia, Žinčica (outline; Šariš and Spiš variant)wiki