A HISTORY OF SWEDISH CUISINE
When a Swede hears the word husmanskost (old-fashioned home cooking), his mind immediately conjures up an image of a kitchen where the art of cooking stands supreme. One senses the aroma of hearty stews and envisages simmering saucepans. Crispy brown Baltic herring dance about lightly in a heated skillet. Splendid roasts and game tantalize us from the oven, provided it isn't already filled with huge loaves of leavened bread or moist spongecake. Here, one can always find a tasty morsel on which to nibble. Yes, here is a great source of warmth and security.
At any rate, we like to believe that this was the way it once was. However, in days gone by food was by no means as greatly varied as the fare of today. Nowadays we are able to prepare both common foods as well as those for special occasions in a manner that neither our grandparents nor even our mothers could possibly dream.
Sweden is fortunate to have a long coastline and many lakes, thereby ensuring its inhabitants of a great diversity of fish ranging from Baltic herring to cod and salmon.
Meat, on the other hand, was a scarce commodity in kitchens of the past. While hunting did make an additional contribution in sections of the country covered by forest, more of an emphasis was put on raising dairy cattle than on meat production. There was also big game such as moose, as well as quite a bit of poultry and small game such as hare and rabbit.
Husmanskost was simple and concerned itself mostly with porridge and gruel, combs and black pudding, cabbage soup, and dried fish. Every home put aside its own larder from what was harvested from the garden. There wasn't a great deal of cash in circulation in those days, nor an abundance of stores from which to shop every day.
It wasn't until the middle of the 1800s that Swedes were allowed to open country stores. These stores sold salt herring, a few spices, treacle/molasses, coffee, and maybe even a little loaf sugar. However, merchandise was purchased mostly by bartering instead of paying with cash.
On the other hand, city dwellers could go shopping at the grocer's, the butcher's or the baker's. Moreover, they had large pantries and food cellars in which they could stock up to a year's supply of certain staples. Yet, city residents could still remain farmers - by farming on town land!
Salted and dried food constituted the basis of Swedish home cooking. Even today we Swedes prefer a lightly smoked ham at Christmas rather than a fresh one. We also think that the pork knuckles which complement our pea soup or our mashed turnips should be cured with salt. Otherwise, the food won't taste right! Taking into consideration all that salted food, it's no wonder so much beer and ale were consumed long ago.
Prior to the arrival of the canning apparatus and freezers, dehydration and fermentation were two typical methods of food preservation.
Ölsupa was a very common dish previously; it consisted of a soup made from stale bread that had been thoroughly soaked in beer or a derivative thereof. Supanmaten, which means all types of soups, was a good way of using leftovers and making food last.
In 1755 Cajsa Warg's book, "A Guide to Housekeeping for Young Women", was published, and there we are already able to trace the influence of French cuisine in that which we today consider typically Swedish. Many new cookbooks were published during the 19th century and contributed to variation in Swedish home cooking.
Cajsa Warg gave a great deal of advice on the care of stored food. First, she lists everything that is pickled: meat, pork, salmon, salt herring, Baltic herring, small codfish, and eel. Then she continues with all the dried fish: stockfish, flounder, whiting, and pike.
Yellow and green peas (which couldn't be purchased pre-dried back then), hard bread, flatbread, and even meat were also dried. Salted and dried mutton and reindeer meat gave stews and bouillon an especially tasty flavour.
The first one heard of surströmming (fermented Baltic herring) was in a tax roll from the 1500s where it was written that every 15th barrel was to fall to the crown. Some are even of the opinion that the Thirty Year War was won thanks to a little help from surströmming. When it arrived at the battlefront, the soldiers were beside themselves with joy and ate as if there was no tomorrow. Then they went into battle and breathed on the enemy …
I can't vouch for whether or not this was actually true; however, it is a fact that there was a shortage of salt in Sweden at that time. On the coast of northern Sweden, those who worked with preserving Baltic herring discovered a method to preserve the fish yet only used an absolute minimum of salt in the process. This method still exists today - although the fermentation process is carried out under strict control indoors and not outside in fresh air as before.
Baltic herring is caught from May to the beginning of June. This is its spawning season, and the herring is of high quality. Then the herring is fermented and, according to a royal ordinance, first ready to be eaten the third week of August.
Milk was also a sensitive perishable. In fact, it was only during the summer, after spring calving, that milk was plentiful. Just before midsummer cattle, calves, and sheep were driven up to mountain pastures by shepherdesses and didn't return again to the farms until autumn. The young women passed away the time up in the mountains by making cheese, cooking whey-cheese, as well as processing a type of thick sour milk.
Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) described how he ran across a form of "stringy milk" in the province of Ångermanland in his narrative, "A Trip to Lapland in 1732". According to Linné, this was made from the whey after the process of curdling had been completed. The milk was so glue-like that "one could pull it like a string from wall to wall." In the province of Västerbotten he was even served salted and sun-dried breast of woodgrouse. Moreover, he observed, "crayfish and fleas didn't exist in Lapland."
Out in the country, porridge and gruel were the dominate food in the average Swedish household, no matter if it was in a fine manor house or an ordinary farmhouse. Most often porridge was made fresh in the evening and eaten for supper. In the morning, the leftovers were fried and served with syrup, something the children loved. (I still fry my leftover porridge and eat it with lingonberry jam.) Porridge was served as well in the everyday fare as on special occasions. One carefully separated the two types: Simple porridge was prepared with water and served with lingonberries; "white porridge" was a more festive, milk-based porridge. The custom of dining on rice pudding on Christmas Eve is a carryover from days gone by.
Swedes still follow the tradition of taking porridge, flyttgröt, with them when they first visit someone who has just moved wo a new address (even though it's mostly not porridge now but a stew, a cake or some other edible stuff). Previously, new mothers were given post-delivery porridge after the birth of a baby.
Barley porridge was common in Norrland and northern Svealand, while rye porridge dominated elsewhere. During this period, proper porridge was thick and filling. Watery porridge was classified as "gentlemen's porridge". However, one could never be sure of having milk with porridge. Water mixed with honey, syrup, whey, or even Beverages mixed with milk or water were some of the different liquids used in the making of porridge. Sometimes meat or fish bouillon and even lingonberries in water could be served with porridge.
We are used to eating porridge from our own bowl. However, far into the 1940s one could find porridge being eaten from a common bowl in different areas of Sweden, among other places in Southern Lapland. On the other hand, everyone Always had his own bowl for the liquid (grötväta) that was to complement the porridge. If the porridge was especially fine, a dab of butter was dropped in a hole made in the middle.
Chips of dried whey butter or cheese soaked in water were either served as gruel or blended into a White sauce to lend extra flavor to common food. Our Northern provinces still practice this custom today when they season the gravy of game roasts with a Little piece of whey cheese.
Unleavened bread is also an early Discovery. The dough, which might have originated as a clump of porridge, was first flattened out on a stone and then heated until the water evaporated from it. This type of bread exists all over the World and has the advantage to keep for a long time. In Sweden one used say, "what's baked for the christening will keep till the wedding".
Nonetheless, one also celebrated with "birthing beer", "bridal beer", "burial beer", e t c so that scholars still debate which came first: the bread or the beer? Could it possibly be that thirst was a greater drive than hunger? Probably the earliest grains were more suitable for brewing beer than baking bread, and in most countries one brewed beer that was both nutritious, thirst quenching, and yet low in calories.
The Swedes can, in fact, thank some of their kings for many of the dishes which they consider to be typically Swedish. For example, without Gustav Vasa and his "import" of skillful miners, we wouldn't have our falukorv today. A great many oxen were needed in order to pull up the baskets from the Falu copper mines. When they no longer had the strength to work as draught animals, they were slaughtered. Their hide was used for making belts for the miners as well as for the baskets which transported the copper ore up from within the mines. The meat of the oxen was used for roasts and other delicacies for the hungry miners. However, even the smaller pieces of meat and intestines didn't go to waste. Among others, miners coming from Belgium and Germany made their native sausage. It was quickly named falukorv, and became so popular that it was later sold at marketplaces. In Germany we can find one of the forefathers of falukorv in the sausage called Thüringer Bratwurst.
If we can believe a royal letter to a bailiff named Jöran Jönsson in 1562, Gustav Vasa's son, King Erik XIV, was the first crayfish lover in Sweden. The king wanted "a huge heap of crayfish" for both his guests at the castle as well as for a wedding.
The descending Vasa kings also liked crayfish very much. This is probably due to the fact that by then the Italian cuisine even influenced the kitchens of the royal family. Crayfish had been eaten on the continent for a long time, and the monasteries (even those in Sweden) had their own crayfish catchers. Crayfish were used for both food and medicine.
However, it wasn't until the 1700s that crayfish and the notion of crayfish parties spread to the country estates throughout Sweden and were eulogized by Carl Michael Bellman, Sweden's national poet, in many of his ballads. Moreover, it wasn't until the 20th century that crayfish parties became widespread throughout all of Sweden, starting first in Svealand and northern Götaland. It was also then that all the paraphernalia such as paper moons, special plates and cutlery, especially woven crayfish-striped tablecloths, and handblown glass decanters in the form of dogs or pigs e t c appeared.
There is another favorite dish that is of royal origin. King Karl XII, our "warrior king", and his soldiers were imprisoned in Bender in Turkey for many years. There, the king and his men tasted dolmar which were made from mutton wrapped in grape leaves. In Turkish, dolmar means cloak and refers to the wrapping of the grape leave. When the warriors eventually returned home to Sweden, they took the recipe for dolmar with them. However, now the commonplace cabbage leaf was substituted for the grape leaf. The rice used in this recipe still reminds us of the oriental heritage of this dish. According to research carried out by the royal restaurateur Tore Wretman, the custom of dining on "kåldolmar" began in Stockholm. A group of Turkish officials travelled to Stockholm to press the king for money, and then stayed on for several years!
Cajsa Warg's recipe for "kåldolmar" contains a mixture of minced veal and rice seasoned with pepper, nutmeg, salt, onion, and some cloves. She writes that this mixture is then wrapped in grape leaves, but if none are available "one can use cabbage leaves instead".
Sweet desserts weren't very prevalent in the everyday diet, but during berry season one gorged on "berry pudding" which actually was something of a cross between a pudding and a thickened soup. In Småland, Hälsingland, Västerbotten, and Norrbotten thin rounds of rye or even sometimes wheat were baked and then filled with a thick layer of blueberries or lingonberries. However, in those days the most common dessert, and evening meal as well sometimes, was lingonberries and milk.
The potato had already made its way to Sweden by the 1600s, and the first recipes turned up in 1664. However, Jonas Alströmer is considered to be the father of the Swedish potato. In 1733 he wrote that one could boil, mash, and even mix the potato with flour, a technique used for making potato dumplings.
The potato didn't really gain popularity, however, until the duchess Eva de la Gardie discovered the art of distilling aquavit from potatoes, thereby saving the invaluable grain for food. In 1748, Eva de la Gardie was the first woman to be elected into the Swedish Academy of Science. In her writings, she pointed out that one could also make flour and even powder from potatoes.
Despite the fact that farmers first thought the potato to be tasteless in comparison to the turnip and carrot, it didn't take long before the potato definitely became the number one staple in Sweden. In many homes throughout the country the only dinner food available was herring fins, potatoes, and lingonberries. Many different varieties of potatoes became available: rosy red, yellow, white, and blue … and they could be mealy, juicy, dry, or sometimes even a little leathery. Certain types reminded us of the present day "almond potato", a favorite of the inhabitants of northern Sweden. In Västergötland, near Falköping, one developed a local sort that was scaly like asparagus. Today, the indigo blue Congo potato has become popular, especially with professional chefs.
Potatoes are a major industry today. Just think about those early spring potatoes grown on the Bjäre peninsula in Skåne. Swedes delight in eating these steaming, new-boiled potatoes together with just a dab of butter and a little salt!
During the rest of the year potatoes are served as a complement to other foods, but can even turn up in the form of old favorites such as potato pancakes or potato dumplings. Modern industry has converted the potato into many different forms ranging from potato chips to potato au gratin that can be heated either in a regular oven or a microwave.
Perhaps we haven't given much thought to the fact that one of the most revolutionary inventions of industrialization was the cast-iron stove, the forerunner of our modern-day range. By the mid-1800s it had become widespread and made food preparation much easier compared to preparing food in a big kettle over an open hearth. Cast-iron stoves were a very comfortable source of heat in the kitchen and also encouraged home baking in an entirely new way.
Previously, one baked in large open ovens located in bakeries that were separate from the main house, something which is still customary today in our northern provinces. One baked only a few times a year, usually at Christmas and in late spring. On those occasions, which lasted for several days each, one baked a household's entire bread supply for the coming months. Often all the women in the village baked together.
With the onset of cast-iron stoves one could bake more often and make smaller portions of bread, buns, and cakes. Coffee klatches became a way of socializing and still exist today. Nowadays, a guest isn't offered such a broad selection of rusks, sweet yeast bread, cakes, and several different types of cookies as frequently as was the fashion 40 or 50 years ago.
You might wonder about the smörgåsbord. Surely it must be included within the realm of Swedish home cooking. Yes, for celebrations and mostly at restaurants. Our Christmas smörgåsbord and those found on other major holidays are a simplified form that still exists today.
The origin of the Swedish smörgåsbord can be traced back to the so-called brännvinsbordet, a little cocktail (schnapps) buffet which started off dinner in days gone by. The men usually gathered in the corner of the living or dining room. They enjoyed a schnapps with a little salt on the side. Now and then the ladies might be offered a sugar cube soaked in aquavit.
If one visits the Nordiska Muséet in Stockholm, one can see a reconstructed brännvinsbord, beautifully set with a stiffly ironed damask tablecloth, a chest filled with small bottles for different sorts of aquavit, some of them personally flavored perhaps. Popular schnapps flavorings were wormwood, sweet gale, caraway, Southern wood, as well as bitter orange. Moreover, the table should be set with pickled anchovies from young herring, a well-ripened cheese, and salted pretzels on which to munch.
Swedish restaurants have experienced a renaissance of the smörgåsbord, especially during the tourist season. Therefore, it is extremely important that competent staff is available to help instruct tourists on the etiquette of enjoying a smörgåsbord. For the sake of orientation, one should take a stroll around the entire buffet first in order to see the many different types of delicacies available. Then one should return to the smörgåsbord at least four or five times in order to avoid mixing the different types of food and flavors too much.
When a Swede hears the word husmanskost (old-fashioned home cooking), his mind immediately conjures up an image of a kitchen where the art of cooking stands supreme. One senses the aroma of hearty stews and envisages simmering saucepans. Crispy brown Baltic herring dance about lightly in a heated skillet. Splendid roasts and game tantalize us from the oven, provided it isn't already filled with huge loaves of leavened bread or moist spongecake. Here, one can always find a tasty morsel on which to nibble. Yes, here is a great source of warmth and security.
At any rate, we like to believe that this was the way it once was. However, in days gone by food was by no means as greatly varied as the fare of today. Nowadays we are able to prepare both common foods as well as those for special occasions in a manner that neither our grandparents nor even our mothers could possibly dream.
Sweden is fortunate to have a long coastline and many lakes, thereby ensuring its inhabitants of a great diversity of fish ranging from Baltic herring to cod and salmon.
Meat, on the other hand, was a scarce commodity in kitchens of the past. While hunting did make an additional contribution in sections of the country covered by forest, more of an emphasis was put on raising dairy cattle than on meat production. There was also big game such as moose, as well as quite a bit of poultry and small game such as hare and rabbit.
Husmanskost was simple and concerned itself mostly with porridge and gruel, combs and black pudding, cabbage soup, and dried fish. Every home put aside its own larder from what was harvested from the garden. There wasn't a great deal of cash in circulation in those days, nor an abundance of stores from which to shop every day.
It wasn't until the middle of the 1800s that Swedes were allowed to open country stores. These stores sold salt herring, a few spices, treacle/molasses, coffee, and maybe even a little loaf sugar. However, merchandise was purchased mostly by bartering instead of paying with cash.
On the other hand, city dwellers could go shopping at the grocer's, the butcher's or the baker's. Moreover, they had large pantries and food cellars in which they could stock up to a year's supply of certain staples. Yet, city residents could still remain farmers - by farming on town land!
Salted and dried food constituted the basis of Swedish home cooking. Even today we Swedes prefer a lightly smoked ham at Christmas rather than a fresh one. We also think that the pork knuckles which complement our pea soup or our mashed turnips should be cured with salt. Otherwise, the food won't taste right! Taking into consideration all that salted food, it's no wonder so much beer and ale were consumed long ago.
Prior to the arrival of the canning apparatus and freezers, dehydration and fermentation were two typical methods of food preservation.
Ölsupa was a very common dish previously; it consisted of a soup made from stale bread that had been thoroughly soaked in beer or a derivative thereof. Supanmaten, which means all types of soups, was a good way of using leftovers and making food last.
In 1755 Cajsa Warg's book, "A Guide to Housekeeping for Young Women", was published, and there we are already able to trace the influence of French cuisine in that which we today consider typically Swedish. Many new cookbooks were published during the 19th century and contributed to variation in Swedish home cooking.
Cajsa Warg gave a great deal of advice on the care of stored food. First, she lists everything that is pickled: meat, pork, salmon, salt herring, Baltic herring, small codfish, and eel. Then she continues with all the dried fish: stockfish, flounder, whiting, and pike.
Yellow and green peas (which couldn't be purchased pre-dried back then), hard bread, flatbread, and even meat were also dried. Salted and dried mutton and reindeer meat gave stews and bouillon an especially tasty flavour.
The first one heard of surströmming (fermented Baltic herring) was in a tax roll from the 1500s where it was written that every 15th barrel was to fall to the crown. Some are even of the opinion that the Thirty Year War was won thanks to a little help from surströmming. When it arrived at the battlefront, the soldiers were beside themselves with joy and ate as if there was no tomorrow. Then they went into battle and breathed on the enemy …
I can't vouch for whether or not this was actually true; however, it is a fact that there was a shortage of salt in Sweden at that time. On the coast of northern Sweden, those who worked with preserving Baltic herring discovered a method to preserve the fish yet only used an absolute minimum of salt in the process. This method still exists today - although the fermentation process is carried out under strict control indoors and not outside in fresh air as before.
Baltic herring is caught from May to the beginning of June. This is its spawning season, and the herring is of high quality. Then the herring is fermented and, according to a royal ordinance, first ready to be eaten the third week of August.
Milk was also a sensitive perishable. In fact, it was only during the summer, after spring calving, that milk was plentiful. Just before midsummer cattle, calves, and sheep were driven up to mountain pastures by shepherdesses and didn't return again to the farms until autumn. The young women passed away the time up in the mountains by making cheese, cooking whey-cheese, as well as processing a type of thick sour milk.
Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) described how he ran across a form of "stringy milk" in the province of Ångermanland in his narrative, "A Trip to Lapland in 1732". According to Linné, this was made from the whey after the process of curdling had been completed. The milk was so glue-like that "one could pull it like a string from wall to wall." In the province of Västerbotten he was even served salted and sun-dried breast of woodgrouse. Moreover, he observed, "crayfish and fleas didn't exist in Lapland."
Out in the country, porridge and gruel were the dominate food in the average Swedish household, no matter if it was in a fine manor house or an ordinary farmhouse. Most often porridge was made fresh in the evening and eaten for supper. In the morning, the leftovers were fried and served with syrup, something the children loved. (I still fry my leftover porridge and eat it with lingonberry jam.) Porridge was served as well in the everyday fare as on special occasions. One carefully separated the two types: Simple porridge was prepared with water and served with lingonberries; "white porridge" was a more festive, milk-based porridge. The custom of dining on rice pudding on Christmas Eve is a carryover from days gone by.
Swedes still follow the tradition of taking porridge, flyttgröt, with them when they first visit someone who has just moved wo a new address (even though it's mostly not porridge now but a stew, a cake or some other edible stuff). Previously, new mothers were given post-delivery porridge after the birth of a baby.
Barley porridge was common in Norrland and northern Svealand, while rye porridge dominated elsewhere. During this period, proper porridge was thick and filling. Watery porridge was classified as "gentlemen's porridge". However, one could never be sure of having milk with porridge. Water mixed with honey, syrup, whey, or even Beverages mixed with milk or water were some of the different liquids used in the making of porridge. Sometimes meat or fish bouillon and even lingonberries in water could be served with porridge.
We are used to eating porridge from our own bowl. However, far into the 1940s one could find porridge being eaten from a common bowl in different areas of Sweden, among other places in Southern Lapland. On the other hand, everyone Always had his own bowl for the liquid (grötväta) that was to complement the porridge. If the porridge was especially fine, a dab of butter was dropped in a hole made in the middle.
Chips of dried whey butter or cheese soaked in water were either served as gruel or blended into a White sauce to lend extra flavor to common food. Our Northern provinces still practice this custom today when they season the gravy of game roasts with a Little piece of whey cheese.
Unleavened bread is also an early Discovery. The dough, which might have originated as a clump of porridge, was first flattened out on a stone and then heated until the water evaporated from it. This type of bread exists all over the World and has the advantage to keep for a long time. In Sweden one used say, "what's baked for the christening will keep till the wedding".
Nonetheless, one also celebrated with "birthing beer", "bridal beer", "burial beer", e t c so that scholars still debate which came first: the bread or the beer? Could it possibly be that thirst was a greater drive than hunger? Probably the earliest grains were more suitable for brewing beer than baking bread, and in most countries one brewed beer that was both nutritious, thirst quenching, and yet low in calories.
The Swedes can, in fact, thank some of their kings for many of the dishes which they consider to be typically Swedish. For example, without Gustav Vasa and his "import" of skillful miners, we wouldn't have our falukorv today. A great many oxen were needed in order to pull up the baskets from the Falu copper mines. When they no longer had the strength to work as draught animals, they were slaughtered. Their hide was used for making belts for the miners as well as for the baskets which transported the copper ore up from within the mines. The meat of the oxen was used for roasts and other delicacies for the hungry miners. However, even the smaller pieces of meat and intestines didn't go to waste. Among others, miners coming from Belgium and Germany made their native sausage. It was quickly named falukorv, and became so popular that it was later sold at marketplaces. In Germany we can find one of the forefathers of falukorv in the sausage called Thüringer Bratwurst.
If we can believe a royal letter to a bailiff named Jöran Jönsson in 1562, Gustav Vasa's son, King Erik XIV, was the first crayfish lover in Sweden. The king wanted "a huge heap of crayfish" for both his guests at the castle as well as for a wedding.
The descending Vasa kings also liked crayfish very much. This is probably due to the fact that by then the Italian cuisine even influenced the kitchens of the royal family. Crayfish had been eaten on the continent for a long time, and the monasteries (even those in Sweden) had their own crayfish catchers. Crayfish were used for both food and medicine.
However, it wasn't until the 1700s that crayfish and the notion of crayfish parties spread to the country estates throughout Sweden and were eulogized by Carl Michael Bellman, Sweden's national poet, in many of his ballads. Moreover, it wasn't until the 20th century that crayfish parties became widespread throughout all of Sweden, starting first in Svealand and northern Götaland. It was also then that all the paraphernalia such as paper moons, special plates and cutlery, especially woven crayfish-striped tablecloths, and handblown glass decanters in the form of dogs or pigs e t c appeared.
There is another favorite dish that is of royal origin. King Karl XII, our "warrior king", and his soldiers were imprisoned in Bender in Turkey for many years. There, the king and his men tasted dolmar which were made from mutton wrapped in grape leaves. In Turkish, dolmar means cloak and refers to the wrapping of the grape leave. When the warriors eventually returned home to Sweden, they took the recipe for dolmar with them. However, now the commonplace cabbage leaf was substituted for the grape leaf. The rice used in this recipe still reminds us of the oriental heritage of this dish. According to research carried out by the royal restaurateur Tore Wretman, the custom of dining on "kåldolmar" began in Stockholm. A group of Turkish officials travelled to Stockholm to press the king for money, and then stayed on for several years!
Cajsa Warg's recipe for "kåldolmar" contains a mixture of minced veal and rice seasoned with pepper, nutmeg, salt, onion, and some cloves. She writes that this mixture is then wrapped in grape leaves, but if none are available "one can use cabbage leaves instead".
Sweet desserts weren't very prevalent in the everyday diet, but during berry season one gorged on "berry pudding" which actually was something of a cross between a pudding and a thickened soup. In Småland, Hälsingland, Västerbotten, and Norrbotten thin rounds of rye or even sometimes wheat were baked and then filled with a thick layer of blueberries or lingonberries. However, in those days the most common dessert, and evening meal as well sometimes, was lingonberries and milk.
The potato had already made its way to Sweden by the 1600s, and the first recipes turned up in 1664. However, Jonas Alströmer is considered to be the father of the Swedish potato. In 1733 he wrote that one could boil, mash, and even mix the potato with flour, a technique used for making potato dumplings.
The potato didn't really gain popularity, however, until the duchess Eva de la Gardie discovered the art of distilling aquavit from potatoes, thereby saving the invaluable grain for food. In 1748, Eva de la Gardie was the first woman to be elected into the Swedish Academy of Science. In her writings, she pointed out that one could also make flour and even powder from potatoes.
Despite the fact that farmers first thought the potato to be tasteless in comparison to the turnip and carrot, it didn't take long before the potato definitely became the number one staple in Sweden. In many homes throughout the country the only dinner food available was herring fins, potatoes, and lingonberries. Many different varieties of potatoes became available: rosy red, yellow, white, and blue … and they could be mealy, juicy, dry, or sometimes even a little leathery. Certain types reminded us of the present day "almond potato", a favorite of the inhabitants of northern Sweden. In Västergötland, near Falköping, one developed a local sort that was scaly like asparagus. Today, the indigo blue Congo potato has become popular, especially with professional chefs.
Potatoes are a major industry today. Just think about those early spring potatoes grown on the Bjäre peninsula in Skåne. Swedes delight in eating these steaming, new-boiled potatoes together with just a dab of butter and a little salt!
During the rest of the year potatoes are served as a complement to other foods, but can even turn up in the form of old favorites such as potato pancakes or potato dumplings. Modern industry has converted the potato into many different forms ranging from potato chips to potato au gratin that can be heated either in a regular oven or a microwave.
Perhaps we haven't given much thought to the fact that one of the most revolutionary inventions of industrialization was the cast-iron stove, the forerunner of our modern-day range. By the mid-1800s it had become widespread and made food preparation much easier compared to preparing food in a big kettle over an open hearth. Cast-iron stoves were a very comfortable source of heat in the kitchen and also encouraged home baking in an entirely new way.
Previously, one baked in large open ovens located in bakeries that were separate from the main house, something which is still customary today in our northern provinces. One baked only a few times a year, usually at Christmas and in late spring. On those occasions, which lasted for several days each, one baked a household's entire bread supply for the coming months. Often all the women in the village baked together.
With the onset of cast-iron stoves one could bake more often and make smaller portions of bread, buns, and cakes. Coffee klatches became a way of socializing and still exist today. Nowadays, a guest isn't offered such a broad selection of rusks, sweet yeast bread, cakes, and several different types of cookies as frequently as was the fashion 40 or 50 years ago.
You might wonder about the smörgåsbord. Surely it must be included within the realm of Swedish home cooking. Yes, for celebrations and mostly at restaurants. Our Christmas smörgåsbord and those found on other major holidays are a simplified form that still exists today.
The origin of the Swedish smörgåsbord can be traced back to the so-called brännvinsbordet, a little cocktail (schnapps) buffet which started off dinner in days gone by. The men usually gathered in the corner of the living or dining room. They enjoyed a schnapps with a little salt on the side. Now and then the ladies might be offered a sugar cube soaked in aquavit.
If one visits the Nordiska Muséet in Stockholm, one can see a reconstructed brännvinsbord, beautifully set with a stiffly ironed damask tablecloth, a chest filled with small bottles for different sorts of aquavit, some of them personally flavored perhaps. Popular schnapps flavorings were wormwood, sweet gale, caraway, Southern wood, as well as bitter orange. Moreover, the table should be set with pickled anchovies from young herring, a well-ripened cheese, and salted pretzels on which to munch.
Swedish restaurants have experienced a renaissance of the smörgåsbord, especially during the tourist season. Therefore, it is extremely important that competent staff is available to help instruct tourists on the etiquette of enjoying a smörgåsbord. For the sake of orientation, one should take a stroll around the entire buffet first in order to see the many different types of delicacies available. Then one should return to the smörgåsbord at least four or five times in order to avoid mixing the different types of food and flavors too much.
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