A history of food preservation
The Swedish culinary tradition is very much a culture of food storage. The culinary tradition is based on peoples need to eat instead in order to live. Eating fresh berries was a short times luxury, most of them were cooked into jam for the winter. The vegetables got pickled and preserved, the potatoes and other rootvegetables were stored in a cellar. Swedish bread was traditionally baked so it could be stored for long periods. Butter and eggs were luxury goods and meant to be sold, milk was fermented or preserved, and with the aid of bacterial cultures, becoming soured milk, curdeld milk or sour cream. Or else it was made into cheese.
Swedish Husmanskost
From a combination of severve winter climate and intensive summer light, swedish homecooking was born. It is loaded with culinary delights such as, seafood, poultry, lamb, beef, veal and vild game. Traditional methods of smoking, fermenting, salting, drying, marinating and poaching continue to create their own taste sensations. Open landscapes, forests and wetlands not only provide wild game but also, muschrooms and berries.
Examples of Swedish flavours: ättika/Swedish vinegar, pepparrot/horseradish, lingon/lingonberries, blåbär/blueberries, hjortron/cloudberries, rabarber/rhubarb, dill/dill, persilja/parsley, gräslök/chive, senap/mustard, inlagd sill/pickled herring, rökt lax/smoked salmon, älg/moose and ren/reindeer. Examples of the domestic home cooking tradition and Swedish dishes; Swedish meatballs, potato pancakes with fried pork, filled potato dumplings, wild game wallenberger, mushroomsoup, herring plate, dill-cured salmon withmustard sauce, fried baltic herring, salmon pudding, anchovy and potato gratin, egg-anchovy salad, and cold poached salmon.
Unique for Sweden – seven types of cookies
1720 Stockholm had fifteen ”kaffehus” (cafés), serving coffee and wheat-bun (french style). From time to time coffee was forbidden but 1822 it became legal again and the cafés and homewifes started to serve coffee with small cookies. More and more recipies were developed and a cultural tradition around seven cookies where created. For example you always had to taste them all. 1945, a cookie-competition made by ICA-förlaget collected 10.000 recepies and a from a selection of all those recepies a book was made called called ”Sju sorters kakor” /”Seven types of cookies”. Today you can find this book in almost every Swedish home. Perhaps the end of the war and rationings of eggs, flour, sugar, butter and fat made all the housewifes eager to bake.
The Swedish Smörgåsbord
There are different sources when it comes to when this started but during fourteenth-century the members of the Swedish merchant and upper class served schnapps-table/brännvinsbord, a drink table, set with small goodies for example bread, butter, cheese, herring, smoked salmon, sausages, cold cuts and of corse snaps/schnapps to drink.The schnapps-table/brännvinsbord was served for a gathering of people, eatening while standing before a dinner or supper, often two to five hours before dinner, sometimes with the men and women in separate rooms. The Smörgåsbord became popular in the mid-seventeenth century, when the food moved from the side table to the main table and service began containing both warm and cold dishes.
1919 the Swedish Academy mentioned julbord (Christmas table). “Julbord” a word consisting of the elements jul, meaning Yule (today synonymous with Christmas) and bord, literally table. The classic Swedish julbord is the highlight of Swedish cuisine, a traditional smörgåsbord starts with a variety of fish (salmon, herring, whitefish and eel), ham, small meatballs, head cheese and sausages, potato, boiled or potato casserole, soft and crisp bread, butter and different cheeses, beetroot salad, cabbage (red, brown or green), rice pudding and beverages.Smörgåsbord became internationally known as Smorgasbord at the 1939 New York World’s Fair when it was offered at the Swedish Pavilion’s ”Three Crowns Restaurant”. It is a typically celebratory meal and guests can help themselves from a range of dishes laid out for their choice. In a restaurant, the term refers to a buffet-style table laid out with many small dishes from which, for a fixed amount of money, one is allowed to eat as much as you may wish.
Foreign influences
Swedish language, culture, food and flavours are since hundreds of years influenced by countries like France and Germany. Countries that the royalties and the nobility admired, imitated and had contact with.
After World War II USA became the new influencing country. Telvision and Elvis Presley gave us a new youth-culture and a much simpler food-culture. During the 80s Italy and Japan became important influences and during the 90s Asian food (mostly sushi and thaifood) became very popular.
