Buttermilk

Buttermilk : nm  Buttermilk is a white, serous liquid called buttermilk that remains after churning cream in the preparation of Butter. Buttermilk has a sour taste, traditionally obtained from fresh milk or fermented after making butter by churning; it is also made directly from the Milk fresh by adding ferments. This digestible food is used as a drink and is involved in the preparation of various dishes on all continents. It can be eaten raw or cooked.
Buttermilk is also the stick that is used to beat the butter in the churn.
Note: buttermilk is often mistakenly confused with whey.

Buttermilk, as a byproduct of cream milk, comes from the disparaging adjective "low" and the word "buttermilk" (it was written "low-butter").
As a stick operated to beat the cream and form the butter, buttermilk comes from "beating" and "butter"; this word was also written "bat-butter".
Buttermilk is also called "beaten milk", "beaten", "buttermilk" or "churned milk" and even "whey".
The Dictionary of Natural Sciences affirms, in fact, in the XNUMXth century: "When we beat the cream to bring together the fatty parts which form the butter, a liquor is separated, composed almost entirely of the serum of milk, known as the name of whey, and of some buttery and caseous parts. ". Émile Littré uses this definition.
Although the term “whey” is synonymous with whey in the XNUMXst century (see diagram below), it is sometimes still used for buttermilk.
Other names are used regionally: “guinse” in Ch'ti, “bouri” in Walloon from Liège, “betteuze” in the Vosges, “lait ribot” in Brittany (for churned milk as for fermented milk), etc. .
The buttermilk English, buttermilk german and botermelk Dutch literally take up the notion of “buttermilk”.
In Western countries, buttermilk is extracted from freshly milked milk or, more often, from cream milk by churning. This operation destabilizes the emulsion formed by the cream, creating the agglomeration of the fatty globules of the milk, which forms the butter, and a liquid made up of the serum of the cream and the debris of the membrane of the globules. This buttermilk maintains a complex lipid concentration of 1 mg / l.
Buttermilk can also be made from butter oil; in this case, it has a higher concentration of complex lipids.
Like milk, buttermilk can be transformed into a powder which contains 4 to 12% fat, one third of which is phospholipids and other polar fats. In a cool and dry place, this powder can be kept for 6 months.
In the 1990s, buttermilk was also created by adding a bacterial culture to milk. The qualification of “artificial” buttermilk disappeared in the XNUMXst century; English speakers, however, use the name cultured buttermilk to differentiate buttermilk obtained by inoculating milk from that produced by the traditional churning process.

In Africa and Asia, it comes from yogurt. In countries where the temperature is high and where refrigeration infrastructure is lacking, milk is often kept acidified or curdled; buttermilk and butter are therefore obtained from acidified milk and the coagulated buttermilk can be transformed there into lean cheese and whey.
In India, butter is made by first making a whole yogurt in the traditional way, by boiling milk, which once lukewarm is inoculated with the appropriate ferments, then left to cool overnight; the next day, water is added to the yogurt (more or less depending on the ambient temperature) and churned to obtain butter and buttermilk; we keep a small quantity of the latter for inoculating the milk which will become yoghurt and butter the following day.

The sour taste of buttermilk results mainly from the presence of lactic acid naturally produced by the fermentation of lactose, the main sugar in milk. When lactic acid is produced by bacteria, the pH decreases and casein, the main protein in milk, coagulates, making the liquid thicker than fresh milk. It is this acidity which restricts the possibilities of development of potentially harmful microorganisms and gives a good shelf life of the product.

Buttermilk is lower in fat and calories than regular milk. It is rich in potassium, vitamin B12 and calcium which the body easily absorbs because buttermilk is digested more easily than milk.

Buttermilk powder contains (in g / 100 g):
- Water: 2.8-3.8;
- Lipids: 3-6;
- Proteins: 3.3-3.6;
- Carbohydrates: 4.7-4.9;
- Ashes and mineral salts: 7-8.

Raw, buttermilk is consumed as a drink, either plain (to accompany Kalakukko or buckwheat pancakes, for example), or flavored (in particular with grenadine, as in Brittany and Belgium). It is also used in the preparation of various dishes (the pie with Maton de Grammont, waffles from Binche, Irish Boxty, the traditional Buttermilk pie from the southern United States, koldskål and kammerjunker (Danish cookies), etc.). It is a natural emulsifier used in baking, pastry making and making ice cream. It is ideal for preparing fresh sauces with the addition ofaromatic herbs and lemon juice. The Wakhi use it as a binder for floury dishes.

Indians and Wakhis sometimes filter it out. The filtrate was used by the first "tempered with spices like a vegetable, or used as a cosmetic on the body and the hair". The second add a little water to this tchka to be able to soak the bread in it, or let it thicken to form balls which, when dried, constitute the tchkakryt, which is added to the food; they also use buttermilk to moisten the cakes of bread before baking them against the walls of the hearth, which gives them a white appearance.

In Belgium, buttermilk can be made into a light white cheese called maquée in Wallonia, “platte kaas” in Flanders.

Buttermilk can also be cooked, giving it a creamy or pasty consistency, depending on how cooked it is. Creamy and sweet with brown sugar, it is a traditional recipe popular in Belgium and northern France. Pasty, it is formed by the Wakhis in balls which dry on the roofs or on stones to become queryt.
Buttermilk has proven to be an important food everywhere:

- In Europe, "the use of buttermilk is very common in places where a lot of butter is made; in Holland, for this reason, it becomes a common food, and so esteemed that the servants only hire on the condition that it is given to them once or twice a week. It is sometimes used to make soup; we still eat it in other forms, by adding molasses and different ingredients ”.

We also moisten the sound with which we feed the poultry barnyard and cattle. Buttermilk is used as a culture in the manufacture of feta, queso blanco, sheep cheese; it can be used as an inoculation product for the acid coagulation used for the manufacture of fresh cheese. Gaperon is made in Auvergne and Sarasson, a smooth cheese cited by French agronomist Olivier de Serres in 1600, in Forez and Vivarais.

- In India, buttermaking is both economically and ritualistically fundamental, and home-made buttermilk is handed out and drunk in the morning, or taken to the fields unfiltered. Buttermilk therefore has a dietary but also social importance in its daily renewal and distribution; it sometimes constitutes remuneration in kind for the "untouchables".