Food - Drink
Why You May Be Confused Ordering Curd In India
By CLARICE KNELLY
Not only is India popular for its cuisine, with various curries and tandoor-baked breads, it’s also the largest producer of milk in the world. As a result, India has some of the best dairy products, such as the incredibly popular yogurt, Dahi; however, you might be confused by the Indian English name for Dahi — curd.
In America and many parts of the world, the word curd is often associated with cheese curds, and they are defined as "a soft, white substance formed when milk sours, used as the basis for cheese," per Encyclopedia.com. Yet, in India, the word curd and yogurt are interchangeable as the English translations for dahi.
Food historian Ken Albala says, “Only in India does the term 'curds' also refer to yogurt,” although the two have completely different creation processes. Per Times of India, while yogurt is created by bacterial fermentation of milk using a yogurt culture, dahi is made by curdling the milk with an edible acidic substance.