Shineeneh, the salted yoghurt drink

The drink known as ayran in Turkey is called shineeneh in Syria; in Yemen the same thing is haqin. That is how the glass in front of you will be introduced. Same drink, another name. It is not a packaged drink: home yoghurt is thinned with water, salted, and set on the table in a jug.

What goes into it

The base is home yoghurt, laban rayeb. It is thinned with cold water and salted; some households add a pinch of dried mint. The consistency is thinner than milk and thicker than water, and it settles as it stands — which is why the jug gets a swirl before the glass is poured.

Which plate it sits beside

Shineeneh is on the table to carry the food, not to quench thirst. It goes beside the heavy rice dishes — stuffed vegetables, stuffed cabbage leaves, kibbeh, maqluba, the upside-down rice and vegetable pot — and it cuts the fat and the spice. That is the job. In the heat of a summer midday it is drunk on its own, and it is a fixture of the iftar table in Ramadan.

The milk line and the syrup line

Cold drinks on the Syrian table run in two lines. Two lines, two jobs. Jallab, tamarind sherbet and qamar al-din sit on the fruit and syrup side; shineeneh is the milk side, and the everyday answer there. The two can share a table, but they do not do the same work: one is sweet, the other salted.

Where the name comes from

The word is said to have spread from the Turkish ayran, traced back as far as the dictionary of Mahmud al-Kashgari. That does not make the drink a Turkish dish — thinning yoghurt with water and salting it lives in Syria under its own name, at its own table. The salt shifts by region: saltier inland, thinner on the coast.