Talk:Smen

semneh

In Palestinian cuisine, semneh or smen is used to refer to the equivalent of ghee & burghul is used to absorb the lactose being separated from the fats . Tiamut (talk) 15:59, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Suspect some of the descriptions in this article are actually referring to Kashk or what we call jameed, a fermented dried yogurt used as abase in several dishes. Tiamut (talk) 16:03, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

I did talk to some Palestinian friends as I was writing about this and they did say that, traditionally, grains were added to the heated butter to absorb some of the water when making the Palestinian version of samneh. I can't assess the effectiveness of this but it is plausible to me that this is an established tradition in at least Palestine.

Outside of my own OR, I found a couple of sources that mention this:

• Palestinian Information Center: On Palestine, not sure if I can cite this.
• Al-Jazeera: this looks pretty citable.

Though, if "this article" refers to this Wikipedia, then yes, it is admittedly a mess and I think that we should delete all unsourced content eagerly rather than wait for sources because some of this unsourced information has been here for literally a decade. 2kbfloppadisk (talk) 18:27, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

This recipe article explains the traditional process of making semneh in Palestine. Agree with deleting unsourced content. As I said, much if it seems to describing Kashk rather than semneh. Tiamut (talk) 06:15, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

NPR Mention / Is that Valid Enough to be a Source

I THINK this was the article/radio mention i heard that had uninformed dumb american me hearing about this:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/10/09/353510171/smen-is-moroccos-funky-fermented-butter-that-lasts-for-years

I had heard about “Bog Butter” too.

Figured i’d add the interlink, but uncertain on sourcing/formatting.

Either way a decent basic primer, and mentions a book.

cheers, Eric Lotze (talk) 00:31, 22 July 2026 (UTC)