ISSUE 88, GRAB BAG, Part 2: Buttermilk
Buttermilk
The past two decades have brought an onslaught of testimonies about the healthful properties of certain Old World yoghurts—longevity, a healthy digestive system, a reinforced immune system. Buttermilk inspired similar claims a century ago. And not only that. Beauty specialists advised women to cleanse their face and chest with buttermilk instead of water to aid the complexion (1911). For those suffering from sunburn a buttermilk bath provided near total relief. Schoolyard myths told that it could remove freckles.
What was buttermilk and how did it come into existence? When cream was churned to make butter, the fat molecules in the cream would clump together, becoming butter. Churning butter from cream left a liquid filled with milk proteins, lactose milk sugars, and a tincture of milk fat. This was allowed to ferment forming an acidic and thick bodied liquid, buttermilk, that was consumed on its own or used as an ingredient in baking. Nowadays most kinds available on grocery shelves are processed by commercial dairies; 1.5% milk is carefully cultured with proprietary microbes to produce buttermilk. When homemakers churned their own butter, it was a regular byproduct of the process. Now to get the classic buttermilk you have to contact, if you live in Georgia for instance, Southern Swiss Dairy in Waynesboro, Sparkman’s Cream Valley in Moultrie, or Mountain Fresh Creamery in Clermont.
While dipping hot cornbread into cold buttermilk was one form of old time country breakfast, the drinking of a glass of cool buttermilk, particularly in summer, was a practice that went in and out of vogue. In 1910 a sudden fashion for drinking buttermilk spread across the country. “The Buttermilk Habit” broke out because “There is not a healthier drink. Not so long ago it was despised as was the cotton seed. Now its value is being discovered as the value of the cotton seed was discovered.” It was sold at soda fountains as well as groceries and dairies. The habit lasted until orange juice became the new favorite healthy breakfast drink at the end of the 1920s.
Dairies supplying buttermilk did not despair at the beverage’s fall in public favor. While people were not draining a tall chilly glass a day, as they used to do, they did not slack in consuming buttermilk biscuits, buttermilk muffins, buttermilk pancakes, buttermilk cornbread, buttermilk pie, and buttermilk pudding. Even before the Civil War buttermilk had become installed as an essential ingredient in the bakery. Its acid activated baking soda when a dough or batter containing both was heated. Gas would be released and the pancakes became fluffy, the biscuits would rise in the oven, and cakes expand their crumb. Georgia’s high priestess of the kitchen in the early 20th century, Mrs. S. R. Dull delivered this oracle in 1926: “In the south, where quick hot bread is a daily affair, it is buttermilk biscuits we want. The lactic acid which is in the buttermilk makes a soft, moist biscuit, while one made with sweet milk is much more dry and hard.” Mrs. Dull takes aim at the “Old-Fashioned Soda Biscuit” that intermingled ½ pint of sweet milk with baking soda and cream of tartar (a recipe is contained in Harriet Ross Colquitt’s The Savannah Cookbook (1933).
Buttermilk Biscuit
When making biscuit using buttermilk of fairly acid quality if measuring cup of 1/2 pint standard size is used, it will require two cups to mix one quart of flour. These two cups will require one (1) teaspoon of soda sifted with the flour. Mrs. S. R. Dull, “The Art of Biscuit Making”
The flour should be one of the soft white winter wheat varieties. The oven should be hot when the biscuits go in. They should bake 15-20 minutes until the tops are browned and the body risen. The pint of buttermilk, quart of flour, teaspoon of soda formula is sufficiently simple to forestall difficulty. Mrs. Hill, the great authority of the post-Civil War generation, added lard or butter “the size of a large hen’s egg” to her version of this dough.
Buttermilk Pancakes
One quarter of a pound of flour, one small teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, made into a light batter with buttermilk; must be put in the pan at once, with very little butter or lard, and fried as other pancakes. Savannah Morning News 1889
This early minimalist formula was supplemented over the years by various cooks who added 1 egg, a tablespoon of sugar, and salt. The 1950s saw the introduction of Pillsbury and Duncan Hines Buttermilk Pancake mixes, with powdered buttermilk added to the chemical leavens and flour. It was a “just add water” mix as many if not most of the commercial buttermilk pancake mixes have been since 1960.
Buttermilk pancakes were the signature attraction of the South’s first pancake house, Uncle John’s on 3073 Piedmont Road in Atlanta. Opening in Winter of 1962, Uncle John’s was a franchise of the first national pancake house chain, Uncle John’s, founded in Las Vegas in the mid-1950s. Modeled on the legendary Pancake House in Portland, Oregon, it remained open around the clock and offered over 30 different kinds of pancakes. But Buttermilk is what brought customers through the door.
While Buttermilk Pie (either vanilla or lemon flavored) had been served in southern households since World War I, the dish is generally reckoned to be Virginian in origin. An April 27, 1941 article in the Atlanta Journal acknowledges as much.
SOURCES: “A Buttermilk Bath,” Albany Evening Journal (January 18, 1875), 3. “Household,” Savannah Morning News (April 26, 1889), 6. “The Buttermilk Habit,” Augusta Chronicle (July 19, 1910), 6. “Buttermilk an Aid to Beauty,” Augusta Chronicle (July 9, 1911), 2. “Buttermilk Brigade is Growing,” Atlanta Journal (July 16, 1916), 7. Mrs. S. R. Dull, “The Art of Biscuit Making” Atlanta Journal (April 3, 1921), 68. “ Mrs. S. R. Dull, “Southern Biscuits,” Atlanta Journal (June 20, 1926), 104.