said to be based on an 8th-century oral tradition. According to Francoise Aubaile-Sallenave, the first known literary use of the term comes from the Armenian historian Yeghishe. The word Kashk is also mentioned in the Middle Persian text Xusraw ud rēdag in adjectival form: ārd ī kaškēn. the 10th-century Persian Shahnameh ("Book of Kings") by Firdausi the term is used in the sense of "barley flour", but it's also used for a mixture of cracked wheat and cracked barley. Aubaile-Sallenave argues that the original Persian kashk known from early Persian literature was made with barley that contained either a mix of leaven with water or some fermented milk. To answer questions about the modern meaning in Iran for a dried dairy dish, she argued, "Iranian speaking pastorialists, for whom dried sour milk was a staple, and who had no easy access to barley, applied the word kashk by analogy to dry sour milk". Charles Perry offers an alternate explanation based on the 13th century Arabic cookbook Wasf al-Atimah al-Mutadah which says dried yogurt was a Turkomen-style "kashk". A 10th century Arabic cookbook describes two types of kashk, one made of wheat and leaven and another of sour milk. By the Middle Ages the word had two meanings, one referring to barley flour or a mix of barley and cracked wheat, and another to mean a meat or fowl dish cooked overnight (kashak or kashba). Preparation To make the dried yogurt qurut a traditional or modern method can be used. For the modern method, sour yogurt is blended until smooth, then boiled and strained. It is left to ferment in a warm oven for several days, then the moisture is strained and blended with salt to make the kashk. The drained liquid can be used to make qaraqurut ("dried black whey"). For traditionally prepared qurut water is added to full fat yogurt and poured into a goatskin "churn" - a sack hung from a tripod that is swung back and forth until the milk separates into a type of butter and buttermilk. The buttermilk is boiled and drained to obtain curd which is dried in the sun over a period of weeks to make qurut. While traveling in the Baluchistan English explorer Ernest Ayscoghe Floyer encountered this form of kashk: ...from the butter manufacture is left the buttermilk called "dōgh." This is boiled, and the remainder is "luch"; this is pressed