In ancient times, buttermilk was drank with breakfast and with lunch in order to get the full benefits of its curative qualities. The best time for drinking buttermilk was at the end of meal, or early in the morning.
Traditionally, buttermilk was the liquid left over after fat had been separate out of cream for making butter. Buttermilk has been drunk and used in American cooking since colonial times.
European settlers brought cattle and the ability to produce dairy products to North America. However before refrigeration, the natural sugars in milk cause it to sour quickly. Buttermilk lasted a few days which made it very popular, predominantly during colonial times an up to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Colonists like to use buttermilk in the cornmeal pancakes they called johnnycakes. Dutch settlers in New York had it with their breakfast. In the early 1800s, New York City peddlers sold buttermilk at three cents a quart.
Buttermilk was important to early farmers because it was an economically valuable by-product of the cheese- and butter-making process. In the early twentieth century another by-product use was created when a process was developed to make cultured buttermilk by adding lactic acid bacteria to skim milk.
Buttermilk beverage in United States
