A traditional Danish dinner recipe found on
familiejournal.dk
Anyone who knows a little about Scandinavian food in the old times knows that herring, both fresh and salted, was a central part of the diet not just along the coast. Barrels of salted herring were easy to transport and became part of the diet also on the countryside.
A starter/snacks recipe found in “The Skillet Cook Book”
published by Wesson Oil & Snowdrift Sales Co. in1958
Hot, meaty tidbits in a creamy dunking sauce. So good, guests never know when to stop eating! To make Swedish Meat Balls in a chafing dish, brown balls and make sauce in blazer over direct heat. To keep hot, set blazer over boiling water.
Swedish farmhouse cooking from “IKEA’s Kokebok”
(IKEA’s Cook Book) by Carl Butler published in 1979![boiled-pork-with-lentils_post_thumb2[1]](https://recipereminiscing.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/boiled-pork-with-lentils_post_thumb21.jpg "boiled-pork-with-lentils_post_thumb2[1]")
Carl Butler writes: Pork is a fairly cheap kind of meat. So one should be sure to vary the cooking of it as much as possible. Here is a tasty way with lentils. Lentils is a nice and nutritious vegetable that works well with pork.
Gravlax is a Nordic dish consisting of raw salmon, cured in salt, sugar, and dill. Gravlax is usually served as an appetizer, sliced thinly and accompanied by hovmästarsås (literally maitre d’s sauce, also known in Sweden as gravlaxsås and in Denmark as rævesovs, literally fox sauce), a dill and mustard sauce, either on bread, or with boiled potatoes.
Gravlax literally means “buried salmon,” and that is how it was made in the hard old days. To store the abundance of summer for a long time without using much salt or other (at that time) expensive preservatives, the fish was wrapped in birch bark and buried in the ground, where a wet, cold environment and a lack of oxygen made it ferment but not rot. Made that way, it was more a culinary extreme sport than what we normally think of as “food”: Imagine an unpasteurized Camembert cheese in the form of a fish, made by desperate Vikings.
It is not safe to eat fish that has been buried in the ground, although the slightly acidic birch bark would bring down the pH and thus present a certain barrier against spoilage. When a 15th-century Norwegian or Swede ate gravlax, considerable risk was involved; weighed against the certain dangers of starvation, it was worth it.
It is reasonable to suppose that the dish simply grew up, evolved to its modern form and conquered the world. But back in its place of origin, something very close to the first gravlax still exists. Rakfisk is its nearest modern-day relative. It hails from the mountain regions and is most often made with trout
.
The word gravlax comes from the Scandinavian word gräva/grave (“to dig”; modern sense “to cure (fish)”) which goes back to the Proto-Germanic *grabą, *grabō (“hole in the ground; ditch, trench; grave”) and the Indo-European root *ghrebh- “to dig, to scratch, to scrape”, and lax/laks, “salmon”.
Gravlax is usually cured with sugar, salt and dill, but lemon juice, beetroot, aquvit or portwine can be added. The fish is often eaten on rye bread.
Today fermentation is no longer used in the production process. Instead the salmon is “buried” in a dry marinade of salt, sugar, and dill, and cured for a few days. As the salmon cures, by the action of osmosis, the moisture turns the dry cure into a highly concentrated brine, which can be used in Scandinavian cooking as part of a sauce. This same 
method of curing can be employed for any fatty fish, but salmon is the most commonly used.
We tend to think of food in terms of being either “raw” or “cooked.” As French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out, those antonyms are two of our guiding concepts to help us distinguish between edible and non-edible, wild and cultured. Rakfisk and gravlax cannot easily be categorized in such a way.
A traditional Swedish lunch/dinner recipe found in
“Carl Butler’s Cook Book” published i Norwegian
by Cappelen i 1974
Nordic cookbook history was written in 1974. That year a bunch of foodie friends published a cookbook that would become one of Scandinavia’s most popular, “Carl Butler’s Cookbook”. With folded corners, patches of pie dough, tomato and French mustard and an unmistakable scent of herbal spices and garlic it can be found in hundreds of thousands of Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian homes. The book put for the first time coq au vin, moussaka and paté on our tables.
A fryingpan or griddle bread recipe found on koket.se
Fryingpan bread, or “stompa” as it is also called,
usually Swedish children’s favourite between meals snack.
A Swedish classic found in “Kulinarisk Pass” (Culinary Passport)
published by Tupperware in 1970
No Swedish Christmas table without Jansson’s! According to insecure sources, the dish has got its name after the opera singer Pelle Janzon, who lived in the last half of the 19th century, and was fond of both good food and drinks. One of the dishes served after the final curtain was this potato and anchovy dish, with plenty of beer and aquavite.
A classic Swedish recipe found in “Det Gode Norske Kjøkken”
(The Good Norvegian Kitchen) utgitt av Gyldendal i 1981
![biff rydberg_post_thumb[2]_thumb](https://recipereminiscing.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/biff-rydberg_post_thumb2_thumb1.jpg "biff rydberg_post_thumb[2]_thumb")
Biff Rydberg is a Swedish distinguished and unmixed harsh. It is
said that the origin is at Hotell Rydberg at Gustav Adolfs
square in Stockholm.
And yes, If you are wondering how a classic Swedish dish ended
up in a book calles “The Good Norwegian Kitchen”,
well, so do I – Ted
A classic scandinavian sandwich recipe found in “Stora boken om Smörgåsar & Smörgåstortor” (The Big Book about Sanwiches and Sandwich Cakes) utgitt i 1985
This sandwich is typical for the lavish sandwiches one can get
at cafes and restaurants in Copenhagen
A traditional recipe from Sweden’s southernmost landscape found in “Carl Butlers Kokebok – Fortsettelsen” (Carl Butler’s Cook Book – The Continuance) published by Cappelen in 1991
Nordic cookbook history was written in 1974. That year a bunch of Swedish foodie friends published a cookbook that would become one of Scandinavia’s most popular, Carl Butler’s Cookbook. With folded corners, patches of pie dough, tomato sauce and French mustard and an unmistakable scent of herbal spices and garlic it can be found in hundreds of thousands of Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian homes. The book put for the first time coq au vin, moussaka and paté on our tables.
For all Scandinavians who like me love that cook book it took 17 years before we could hurry to the book shops to buy the continuance. It was simply called “Carl Butler’s Kokebok – Fortsettelsen” (Carl Butler’s Cook Book – The Continuance). This recipe is from that book – Ted
A quick dinner recipe found in “God Mat på en Halv
Timme” (Nice Food in Half an Hour) published by
Alt om Mat in 1974
Smoked pork is delicious and often used summer food in Scandinavia.
This little recipe has been simplified, but it is undoubtedly an advantage
if the meat can stay a while in the “marinade” to pick up flavour.
A dinner recipe from “Mine 100 Bedste Opskrifter Fra Fad
Og Fryser” (My 100 Best Recipes from Pots and Freezer) by Mona Giersing published by Lademann in 1982
It’s not very often you see Scandinavian dinner recipes using fruit to the to the extent that Mona Giersing is using here. It almost gives this veal stew a touch of the Caribbean and that certainly works for me – Ted
A classic cake recipe found in “Mine Lekreste Kaker” (My Most Delicious Cakes) published by Teknologisk Forlag in 1994
A classic Scandinavian cake not different from the Chelsea Buns
in appearance.
A seafood recipe found in “God Mat på en 1/2 Timme” (Nice Food in Half an Hour) published by Alt Om Mat in 1974
The simple fish sauce gets a creamy consistency from cream cheese and a spicy touch of mustard. Please try the combination next time you cook fish.
A traditional Danish lunch/dinner recipe
found on familiejournal.dk
Cold potato salad with frikadells is a nice old-fashioned Danish dish
that can be enjoyed by everyone.
