Buttermilk Pie

Buttermilk is a favorite of mine; therefore, buttermilk is something I always have in the refrigerator. To keep things simple, you can just buy pie dough from the refrigerated section of your supermarket, or you can buy preformed shortbread or graham cracker crust pie shells, which come in a baking tin. I "believe" they are all 9 inch pie shells, but this amount of filling from this recipe should be fine for 9 or 10 inch diameter pies.

 

 

Ingredients (for one 9 to 10 inch pie):

 

1 cup buttermilk 

1 1/4 cups sugar 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 extra large eggs 

3 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 tablespoon orange or lemon juice

1 tablespoon orange or lemon zest   

unbaked pie dough (preformed shortbread shell)

raspberries, blackberries or strawberries for garnish 

Mix together well the buttermilk, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, flour, melted butter, orange or lemon juice and orange or lemon zest. Add the filling to the pie shell and bake at 350 F for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the middle of the pie is well set. Let the pie cool for about 15 or 20 minutes, then cover it lightly with a kitchen towel or a paper towel and let it cool a further half hour; or, refrigerate until the pie is chilled.  Serve with fresh or thawed frozen raspberries, blackberries or strawberries; OR, a mixture of these. Oh, and there is whipped cream to top the fruit, or you can simply top the pie slices with whipped cream.   

Variation #1: Chocolate Buttermilk Pie: use a preformed chocolate pie shell, use no lemon (or orange) juice, no lemon (or orange) zest, add and mix into the filling 1 heaping tablespoon cocoa.

Variation #2: Chocolate & Peppermint Buttermilk Pie: use the same mixture as for the chocolate pie  above, except, use no vanilla extract, but add 1 teaspoon peppermint extract to the filling mixture.

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Bore-This is the noun and verb form having to do with "piercing a generally solid material to make a hole." It is related to the main body of "perforation" and "perforate," both words borrowed from Latin. "Bore" goes back to Indo European "bher(h)," which meant "to pierce or cut through." This gave Old Germanic the verb "buronan," meaning "to pierce, to make a hole in a material by turning a sharp tool to drill into the material." This gave Old English the verb "borian," with the same meanings. This then became "boren," before the modern form. The English noun form "bore" either developed from the verb or there is a possibility that Old Germanic had a noun form "bur/bor," meaning "a tool for piercing," but the English noun form doesn't seem to show up until the 1300s, which adds the possibility that it came along into English via Old Norse, or that Old Norse strongly reinforced a developing native form based upon the existing English verb form. The noun also took the meaning of "the result of boring;" that is, "the bored hole in a material."