Milking Eleanor
by Kay
Weather-worn doors slid open on Pop Printy’s Indiana barn. Light shone through cracks between boards and dust would suspend in each slant of light. Spider webs shrouded the windows.
The cow’s name was Eleanor. Barn cats clustered when Eleanor was milked, hoping for a shot at warm milk. Pop would pour a little milk into an aluminum pie plate for the cats, or sometimes squirt a bit right from the cow into a cat’s mouth. Milk was stored in pails in a milk house, down a hole in the ground to keep it cool. I wasn’t allowed to play in the milk house, for fear I’d fall down the hole.
In the house, Mom poured fresh milk into bottles and let cream rise to the top. She skimmed off the cream and made butter and sour cream. She made buttermilk, too, for biscuits. Not much was on that farm that wasn’t homemade.
I still make buttermilk and sour cream like Mom Printy:
- My sour cream jar holds around a cup, I’d say. I pour about a quarter cup of buttermilk in the jar and then fill the jar with cream. I stir it a bit and then cover the jar with a clean cloth and set the jar in a warm place for a day or so.
- My buttermilk jar holds two cups. I pour maybe a half cup of buttermilk into the jar and fill it the rest of the way with milk. Buttermilk needs to sit in a warm place for a day or two just like the sour cream. You can start with buttermilk from the store, but be sure to buy the kind that has actual cultures in it.
Enjoyed your post and that you still make it the way your grandmother did? A wonderful tribute to her memory.
I saw a recipe from Emeril Lagasse yesterday that called for 1 cup cream and 1 tsp. buttermilk, mixed, left out to rest for a day or so…and he called in Creme Fraise. Interesting, in comparison to your recipe here! Would you say that what you make is like Creme Fraise?
The point, I believe, is to introduce the live cultures into the milk. I suspect it doesn’t matter how much of the culture is introduced. I know my grandma didn’t measure. She kept cycling a bit of last week’s buttermilk into the fresh milk or cream, so she’d always have some that way. Foodies all over the web are arguing about the percent of butterfat that is in sour cream or crème fraîche and what is what. I’ll leave that to other experts. The same culture makes all of it, though: buttermilk, crème fraîche, and sour cream. Do try it yourself. It’s quite good.
I had I feeling I was spelling it wrong, but I neglected to check! I will try for sure…I really want to have a source for it, but can’t get it here in my small town…I’ll keep you informed!
I’m trying to figure out how to make yogurt, without one of those machines. We eat quite a bit of yogurt. I understand that one can even make it in a slow cooker.
This picture shows the hardworking people who came before us and made so much of what we have possible. Buttermilk makes delicious pancakes too.
There are trade-offs. They had fresh milk and eggs and no locks on their doors. We have bathrooms, medical care, and running water.