Buttermilk

“ Buttermilk is often more acceptable to patients than sweet milk, and, if it can be obtained fresh every day, it can be used occasionally to add variety to a strictly milk or liquid diet. It is said that six ounces of buttermilk has in it the same amount of nutrition as a medium-sized potato. [2] “Actual experiment has demonstrated that a fifteen-cent lunch containing nine different food materials (soup, beef, potatoes, turnips, bread, butter, coffee, milk, sugar) , did not have any greater nutritive value than a four-cent lunch consisting of a pint of skimmed milk and ten ounces of bread.” ”

“ There is one thing about buttermilk, in its favor, and that is, it does not intoxicate, and it takes the place of liquor as a beverage. A man may drink a quart of buttermilk, and while he may feel like a calf that has been sucking, and want to stand in a fence corner and bleat, or kick up his heels and run around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated and throw a beer keg through a saloon window.
Another thing, buttermilk does not cause the nose to become red, and the consumer’s breath does not smell like the next day after a sangerfest. ”

“ Fermented milk is highly recommended for all food purposes and is undoubtedly conducive to health, but from the standpoint of nutrition it has practically the same value as fresh milk. The true buttermilk, however, from which the fat-forming elements have been extracted in the form of butter, is a more purely protein product. If you use sufficient buttermilk, that is to say, two quarts or more a day, you can rest assured that you will not crave meat. ”

“ Partially skimmed milk containing from 1% to 2% butter-fat is plenty rich enough and even better for most purposes than whole milk. The essential qualities of good buttermilk depend upon the proper ripening of the cream or milk, the development of a pure “breed” of healthful bacteria in a clean field free from weeds. Such a plantation or “culture” may be grown in milk as well as in cream. Its function is to turn the sugar of milk into lactic acid under the development of pleasing flavors and whether the butter-fat is removed by the separator or by churning makes little difference. ”

“ There is, it is true, an article of butter made in the American style with salt, which, in its own kind and way, has a merit not inferior to that of England and France. Many prefer it, and it certainly takes a rank equally respectable with the other. It is yellow, hard, and worked so perfectly free from every particle of buttermilk that it might make the voyage of the world without spoiling. It is salted, but salted with care and delicacy, so that it may be a question whether even a fastidious Englishman might not prefer its golden solidity to the white, creamy freshness of his own. ”

“ The value of buttermilk is stressed in an extravagant old Hindu proverb: "A man may live without bread, but without buttermilk he dies."
Cheese was made before butter, being the earliest form of dairy manufacturing, so buttermilk cheese came well after plain milk cheese, even after whey cheese. It is very tasty, and a natural with potato salad. The curd is salted after draining and sold in small parchment packages.
German "leather" cheese has buttermilk mixed with the plain. The Danes make their Appetitost with sour buttermilk. Ricotta Romano, for a novelty, is made of sheep buttermilk. ”

“ If you have strength and skill enough to work out all the buttermilk with a ladle, or a hand cool and firm enough to toss it from one hand to the other, giving quick, skillful blows as it passes, so that every drop of buttermilk may be beaten out, then we say, never wash the butter. ”

“ Like the best butter of France and England, it is sweet and pure, like solidified cream, and as different as can be from the hard, salty mass which most generally passes 237 for butter among us. The buttermilk of a daily churning is also sweet and rich, a delicious nourishing drink, and an excellent adjuvant in the making of various cakes and other household delicacies. ”

“ Buttermilk is a valuable and strengthening food. A generation or so ago the Scotch peasants lived almost exclusively on buttermilk and oatmeal, and were a magnificent type of men in every respect. Whey is a pleasant drink, and may be made a substitute for tea where the latter is prohibited. It is also beneficial for the kidneys. Jellies are a pleasant addition to the diet of convalescents, but have little nutritive value. ”

“ It seems most probable that the general idea underlying the dairy ritual is that the dairyman is dealing with a sacred substance, the milk of the buffaloes. This sacred substance is to be converted into other substances, butter and buttermilk, which are to be used by the profane. At the present time much of the butter goes to those who are not even Todas and are regarded by the Todas as inferior beings. ”

“ Or, one quart of buttermilk or sour milk, soda enough to make it foam, and while foaming pour it on the Graham flour, stirring it together quickly. The flour should be all ready in the pan, and one teaspoonful of salt, and a scant half-teacup of molasses stirred into it before the soda is put to the buttermilk. Make it as thick as pound-cake; bake immediately one hour with a steady hot fire; add a well-beaten egg if in a hurry for your bread, as it will bake sooner, and we think be lighter for it. ”

“ Used thus in butter-making, an excellent product results, provided cleanliness be scrupulously maintained. The culture repeats itself in the buttermilk, which in turn may be used again with marked success. Much fine butter, indeed, was made long before the bearing of bacteriological science upon the practice of dairying was recognized—made by using acid buttermilk from a previous churning.
In Denmark, which is, for its size, the greatest butter-producing country in the world, most of the butter is made with the aid of “starters,” or artificial cultures which are employed in ripening the cream. ”

“ Buttermilk Bread. 1 pint buttermilk heated to scalding.
Stir in, while it is hot, enough flour to make a tolerably thick batter. Add half a gill of yeast, and let it rise five [271] or six hours. If you make it over night you need not add the yeast, but put in, instead, a tablespoonful of white sugar. In the morning, stir into the sponge a tablespoonful of soda, dissolved in hot water, a little salt, and two tablespoonfuls melted butter. Work in just flour enough to enable you to handle the dough comfortably; knead well, make into loaves, and let it rise until light. ”

“ Spread a linen cloth in a large bason, pour in the cream, tie it up like a pudding, fold another cloth over it, and bury it in a hole two feet deep, in light earth, put all the earth lightly in, lay a turf on the top, and leave it twenty-four hours; take it up, and it will be found in the state that butter is when it is just come. The buttermilk is lost, but this method answers very well in hot weather. ”

“ Butter. Good, fresh butter, contains 84 to 88 parts of milk fat, 10 or 12 parts of moisture, and a little milk sugar, caseine and salt. inferior butter may contain as much as 33 per cent. of water, or buttermilk, and salt. The more buttermilk left in, the sooner 29the butter grows rancid, while over-working tends to make it soft and oily. The melting of butter changes its physical properties, and long exposure to the air injures the best butter.
Good butter is solid and of a grained texture, has a fine orange yellow color and a pleasant aroma. ”

“ The only difficulty in keeping butter grows out of failure to get out all the milk, and thoroughly salt every particle, within fifteen minutes after churning. Speedy removal of buttermilk and water, and speedy salting, will make any butter keep. ”

“ To allow plenty of room for the cream to shake about, the churn should not be much more than half full. When the globules of fat suspended in the milk stick together and form granules as large as good sized pin-heads it is time to stop the churn and drain off the buttermilk. If the butter fails to “come” in half an hour or forty minutes it may be because the cream in the churn is too warm or too cold. A little cold or warm water, as the case may be, can be added as a simple remedy. ”

“ These were lifted out and put in a wooden bowl and Norah “worked out” the buttermilk, leaving, finally, a firm, yellow lump of butter.
“There you are!” cried Farmer Joel. “When it is salted you may eat some on your bread for supper.”
And the six little Bunkers did, saying it was the best they had ever tasted. Daddy Bunker and his wife drank some of the buttermilk left in the churn after the butter was taken out. But when Russ tasted it he made a funny face and cried:
“Sour! Ugh! Sour!”
“Of course!” laughed his mother. “Buttermilk is always sour. ”

“ After the butter is separated from the cream, the buttermilk remains, containing the casein, salt, and sugar present in the original cream, though a portion of these is taken up with the butter. The greater the proportion of casein left in the butter, the poorer is the latter in quality, and the more readily will it become rancid. ”

“ A process of perfect [674] preservation of foods has never been invented and probably never will be. No matter how well foods may taste, they undergo constant chemical changes from the time they leave the ground or parent stalk until they are thoroughly decomposed. All vegetables, therefore, should be used fresh, if possible.
BUTTERMILK
An excellent quality of buttermilk may be made as follows: Allow sweet milk to stand (well covered) in a warm room until it thickens or coagulates; whip with an ordinary rotary egg beater without removing the cream. ”

“ Nice cool butter will then be had in the hottest weather. It requires more working in hot than in cold weather; but care should be taken at all times not to leave a particle of buttermilk, or a sour taste, as is too often done.—To preserve Butter, take two parts of the best common salt, one part of fine loaf-sugar, and one of saltpetre; beat them well together. To sixteen ounces of butter, thoroughly cleansed from the milk, add one ounce of this mixture: work it well, and pot down the butter when it becomes firm and cold. ”

“ Yet there is real joy in finding those lovely yellow granules in the bottom of your churn and then working it over and over with a saucer in a cooking-bowl until it is one golden mass. Several times before I'd shaken up sour cream in a sealer, but this was my first real butter-making. I have just discovered, however, that I didn't "wash" it enough, so that all the buttermilk wasn't worked out of my first dairy-product. Dinky-Dunk, like the scholar and gentleman that he is, swore that it was worth its weight in Klondike gold. And next time I'll do better. ”

“ When the butter has "come", rinse the sides of the churn down with cold water and take the butter up with a perforated dasher or a wooden ladle, turning it dexterously just below the surface of the buttermilk to catch every stray bit ”

“ To make it eat like fresh butter, dip each piece into water when it is cut out of the jar; or work it over again in fresh buttermilk or milk, and make it into shapes like fresh butter. It will eat much better with toast, than most of the fresh butter that is made in winter. It is a false idea, that butter, to be preserved for winter use, requires a greater quantity of salt: experience has proved the contrary. Butter salted in the common way, and put in pots with brine over the top, retains its flavour, and is better preserved than by an additional quantity of salt. ”

“ Then, after lighting the fire, he takes the mu off the patat, and, if the milk has coagulated, he begins to churn. After churning for a little while he puts some of the coagulated milk on the mani. After the churning is over, he milks, putting some of the first milk on the bell.
FIG. 23.—THE ‘WURSOL’ OF KARS, KERNPISI (56) , STANDING BY THE SIDE OF HIS DAIRY.
After the milking is finished, buttermilk is distributed to the women, and a mixture of milk and buttermilk is given to the men, who come to drink it standing outside the dairy. ”

“ Overrun.—Creamery men are much interested in the “Overrun” which means the increase from the churn over the amount of fat in the milk. For instance, if a quantity of milk containing 100 lbs. butter-fat as shown by the Babcock Test produces 114 lbs. of finished butter, the overrun is 14%. The buttermaker who gets the largest overrun by reducing the loss of butter-fat in the skim milk and the buttermilk to a minimum, keeping the percentage of water in the butter just below 16%, and yet producing high scoring butter, is considered most efficient. ”

“ Imperfect washing is the frequent cause of bad butter, and in nothing is the skill of the dairymaid tested more than in this process; moreover, it is one in which cleanliness of habits and person are most necessary.
Butter Milk.—The operations of churning and butter-making over, the butter-milk is disposed of: usually, in England, it goes to the pigs, but it is a very wholesome beverage when fresh, and some persons like it; the disposal, therefore, will rest with the mistress: the dairy-maid's duty is to get rid of it. ”

“ Butter.—Of all articles of food butter has most fully received the attention of the sophisticator, because it is the most costly of the ordinary articles of diet, and because its composition is so intricate and variable that its analysis presents extraordinary difficulties and its nature exceptional and various opportunities for admixture with foreign substances. It is the intention of the producer of butter to separate the fatty portion of the milk as completely as is practicable from the other constituents of the milk without destroying the fat-globules. ”