Kaymak (Serbian Cyrillic: Кајмак); also kaymak, kajmak, kaimak, keimach or qeymağ, also geymar, gaimar, is a creamy dairy product, similar to clotted cream, popular in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Turkey, Iraq, to the Middle East, Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. It is made from the milk of water buffalos in the East or of cows in the West.
The traditional method of making kaymak is to boil the milk slowly, then simmer it for two hours over a very low heat. After the heat source is shut off, the cream is skimmed and left to chill (and mildly ferment) for several hours or days. Kaymak has a high percentage of milk fat, typically about 60%. It has a thick, creamy consistency (not entirely compact due to milk protein fibers) and a rich taste.
The word kaymak has Turkic-Central Asian origins, possibly formed from the verb kayl-mak, which means melt and molding of the metal in Mongolian. The first written records of the word kaymak is in the well-known book of Mahmud al-Kashgari, Kutadgu Bilig. Still in modern Turkic languages the word exists with small differences such as qaymaq in Azerbaycani, qaymoq in Uzbek, каймак in Kyrgyz, kaymak in Turkmen and kaylgmak in Mongolian. However in these languages noun form of the word is not reserved for the produced end product, but it refers to the clot of any milk formed after boiling.