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Fermented milk from Parts of Europe

Traditional churn buttermilk (Europe)karnemelk

Traditional buttermilk is the sour liquid left when naturally soured cream or milk is churned into butter. Lactic bacteria that soured the cream pass into the buttermilk, which is drunk thin and sour in parts of Europe.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Traditional churn buttermilk itself. Its own sources do not record how it is made, so the steps and scenes below are those of Cultured buttermilk, the closest documented fermented milk ferment, shown as a guide to the method, not as a record of Traditional churn buttermilk.

Short entryFermented milk

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedWhat goes in. No source gives amounts for this ferment.
cream or whole milk soured naturally before churning
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the steps of Cultured buttermilk: 18 h

Start
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82 °C

What changes: Heat kills stray bacteria and firms the milk protein

Step 1 of 5 · steps of Cultured buttermilk
Heat the milk
Time
10 min
Reported
Temperature
82 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

Dairies heat the milk to 90–95 °C for about 5 minutes (Tetra Pak).

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

heat kills competing bacteria

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Traditional buttermilk is the sour liquid left when naturally soured cream or milk is churned into butter. Lactic bacteria that soured the cream pass into the buttermilk, which is drunk thin and sour in parts of Europe.

What makes this one different

Churn buttermilk is a by-product of butter making from soured cream, unlike cultured buttermilk, which is skim milk soured with a culture.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Hangop (Netherlands)Buttermilk or yoghurt hung in a cloth to drain into a thick dessert (the name means "hang up").

Safety

Cream left to sour on its own may be raw. The FDA says illness from raw milk and raw milk products has been linked to bacteria such as Listeria, and that pasteurization kills dangerous bacteria.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Wikipedia says buttermilk was traditionally the nearly fat-free milk left after churning butter from cream cultured with natural bacteria. With refrigeration, butter in industrialised countries is mostly made from uncultured cream.

  1. [fda-raw-milk] US Food and Drug Administration, Food safety and raw milkgov
  2. [milchpqv] Germany, Verordnung über Qualitätsanforderungen an Milchprodukte (Milchproduktqualitätsverordnung, MilchPQV) of 24.11.2025, BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 280, in force from 14.06.2026, Anlage 8 group IV Buttermilcherzeugnis (consolidated text on buzer.de)spec
  3. [codexb32] Österreichisches Lebensmittelbuch, IV. Auflage, Codexkapitel B 32 Milch und Milchprodukte (version of 18.1.2018), section 6.2.15 Echte Buttermilch (web.archive.org copy)spec
  4. [wp] Wikipedia, Buttermilkwiki
  5. [wp-2] Wikipedia, Strained yogurt (hangop)wiki