Milk and Butter

Traditional Finnish dairy cows produced only a fraction of the milk that modern cattle breeds yield. Due to poor nutrition, milk production could stop completely during the winter. Milk was mainly consumed by children and the elderly—adults typically drank small beer.

Souring the milk helped preserve it longer. In Western Finland, a fermentation starter was used to make buttermilk, producing a smooth and stretchy liquid. In the East, milk was left to sour naturally, resulting in a curdled buttermilk known as “kokkelipiimä” (“curd buttermilk”, “chunky buttermilk”). Buttermilk wasn’t usually drunk plain, but mixed with water. It was a common mealtime drink and also suitable for meals during workdays or hunting trips.

A primitive method of making butter was to whip sour milk, a process called “pöyhtäminen”. Churns were already in use in Finland during the Middle Ages. To use a churn, the milk first had to be skimmed. Milk cans were placed in the cold so that the cream would rise to the top. Only the thickest layer of fat could be collected by hand. The skimmed milk was either drunk or used to make churned buttermilk.

Hand-operated cream separators spread in Finland starting in the 1890s. These devices could remove nearly all the fat from milk. The remaining fat-free milk, called “kurri”, was fed to calves. It was widely regarded as unsuitable for human consumption. Only after the World War II, health activism started to promote low-fat alternatives to traditional dairy products.