Before today I thought yogurt and curd are the same. But continuing with my trend of learning more about culinary linguistics, I learned that there is a difference between the words yogurt and curd. Both are made by fermenting milk with bacteria. But the difference lies in the fermenting process and the different bacterias used in the process. Curd is fermented using lactic acid bacteria while yogurt needs to be fermented using two different bacterias with much more complicated names. But that’s nerdy talk, the main difference is that yogurt is industrially made. And this is why curd is much more popular in Bangladesh, compared to yogurt.

Another noteworthy and practical difference between yogurt and curd is the level of lactose. Curd has lower levels of lactose than fresh milk, but it is not completely lactose free. Whereas yogurt has almost no lactose. Thus making it, especially Greek style yogurt, is a much better choice for anyone lactose intolerant.

Curd is a significant part of Bengali cuisine as both an ingredient and a standalone dessert dish. There are two types of curd, sweet and sour. Sweet curd is more dessert and less ingredient. Sour curd is both dessert and ingredient, and it is considered to be the healthier of the two variants because of low calories and low fat.

Bengalis have such a beautiful relationship with curd. It is widely popular and is sold in almost every sweets store in Bangladesh. Still I’ve never seen it get much international recognition, especially not as much as the other sweets like rosogolla or laddu. But curd is one of the more easily made sweets.

Remember that curd does not come in a variety of different flavors like yogurt. Curd is much more homely with the only option being whether you want it to be sweet or not. Now there are some ways to enhance sweet curd, like by adding caramel, but those are extra customizations. The main process of making sour curd is so simple that I had to double check. I have seen my parents make curd for the family. The usual process of making sour curd is to add some curd in a bowl of milk. Then let it ferment overnight, and you have yourself more curd. And just for this, my parents would always ask us not to finish the bowl of curd fully. They’ll use the residual curd to make more.

Now moving to talk about the actual dish, yogurt. As I said, yogurt is not particularly popular to the general mass of Bangladesh, it is thought of as the same as curd. Seeing Mango Yogurt in Moni Dadi’s diary took me by surprise a little. I, a savvy young adult of the 21st century, did not know the difference between curd and yogurt. But this lady was making yogurt, the proper yogurt, almost 40 years back!

There are different yogurt flavored beverages available in Dhaka now, but almost all of them popped up over the last decade. There are some yogurt joints in the city as well, but those are new as well. Outside of the main cities of Bangladesh, I don’t think yogurt drinks or yogurt are a thing. It’s just curd made by different shops in most places of the country. Yet Moni Dadi was making and teaching people how to make yogurt in the 1980s, when there was almost no commercial value of yogurt. She did not have access to any machines to help in the process, nor did she have access to the internet to discover a way around for any obstacle. Yet she took one of the most heavenly fruits of Bangladesh and turned it into Mango Yogurt.

The recipe also made me think which other native fruits can be turned into yogurts just like that. If you have any such recipe, or just a story of your grandmother also making yogurt, I would really love to see them. There is a “Submit Your Own Recipe” tab on the page. Drop your yogurt recipe there and I’ll try it out.