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Fermented milk from Kenya

Kule naotokule naoto

Kule naoto is the Maasai sour milk of Kenya. Raw cow milk, sometimes mixed with fresh blood, is left for at least five days in a gourd treated with Olea africana wood. Lactobacillus plantarum is the main lactic bacterium.

Fully documentedFermented milk5 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold practice; the sources used give a duration, not amounts.
Raw cow milkNot heated[afr26]
Fresh cow bloodSometimes added to the milk[kimetu2026]
Olea africana woodUsed to treat the inside of the gourd[afr26][mureithi2000]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 5 days

Start
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What changes: The inside of the gourd is treated with Olea africana wood

Step 1 of 4
Treat the gourd with Olea wood
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactobacilli
L. plantarum

Output: treated gourd.

Flavour
smoky
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

Kule naoto is the Maasai sour milk of Kenya. Raw cow milk, sometimes mixed with fresh blood, is left for at least five days in a gourd treated with Olea africana wood. Lactobacillus plantarum is the main lactic bacterium. Made in 4 steps over 5 days. The longest step, leave to ferment, takes at least 5 days (Nodem Sohanang F.S. et al. 2026). Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Enterococcus, Lactococcus and Leuconostoc do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepat least 5 daysReported[afr26]Leave to ferment
AciditypH up to 4.5Measured[mathara2004]Leave to ferment

What makes this one different

Kule naoto ferments for at least five days and is sometimes made with blood mixed into the milk. Its main lactic bacterium is the lactobacillus L. plantarum.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Blood-milk kule naotoFresh cow blood is mixed into the milk before fermenting.

Safety

This page records a Maasai practice; it is not a recipe to follow. Kule naoto is made from raw milk, sometimes with fresh blood, and nothing in the process heats them. Enterobacteriaceae were found in 7 of 22 samples; the 15 samples without them were all below pH 4.5. No study we found shows that this souring makes raw milk or blood safe. WHO says most brucellosis cases in the general population come from raw milk and its products, mostly from sheep and goats. It warns against fresh blood and raw milk as a route for Rift Valley fever, which can kill, and says blood and milk should be thoroughly cooked in regions where it spreads in animals. CDC lists Campylobacter, E. coli, Listeria and Salmonella among the germs in raw-milk products, with a higher risk of serious illness for children under 5, adults over 65, pregnant women and people with weak immune systems. CDC says pasteurization removes these germs by heating milk to a high enough temperature for a certain time. The use against diarrhoea on this page is a record of tradition, not medical advice.

Hazards the sources name: Enterobacteriaceae (detected in 7 of 22 samples).

History and sources

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

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
  1. [mathara2004] Mathara J.M., Schillinger U., Kutima P.M., Mbugua S.K., Holzapfel W.H. 2004, Isolation, identification and characterisation of the dominant microorganisms of kule naoto, the Maasai traditional fermented milk in Kenya, International Journal of Food Microbiology 94(3):269–278 (abstract)paper
  2. [afr26] Nodem Sohanang F.S. et al. 2026, Unlocking the microbial potential of traditional African fermented milk products, a systematic review, Frontiers in Food Science and Technology 6 (table 2, citing Mathara et al. 2004 and 2008)paper
  3. [kimetu2026] Kimetu L.M., Njoroge D.M., Owaga E.E. 2026, Influence of fermentation vessels and olive (Olea africana) ash on proximate composition, phytochemicals and consumer acceptability of spontaneously fermented milk, African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development 26(1):28326–28353 (introduction)paper
  4. [mureithi2000] Mureithi W., den Biggelaar C. 2000, Management of trees used in mursik (fermented milk) production in Trans-Nzoia District, Kenya, Journal of Ethnobiology 20(1):75–91paper
  5. [who-brucellosis] World Health Organization, Brucellosis (fact sheet)gov
  6. [who-rvf] World Health Organization, Rift Valley fever (fact sheet)gov
  7. [cdc-raw-milk] CDC, Raw Milk (food safety page)gov