Norwegian and Swedish Recipes, 1893

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

From In Foreign Kitchens: with Choice Recipes from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North by Helen Campbell, 1893.

A Swedish Fish-Soup.

Take one dozen small pan-fish; skin and bone them. Boil the heads and bones in two quarts of water, with a tablespoonful of salt and a handful of dried mushrooms. Egg and crumb the pieces of fish, and fry in boiling lard, letting them drain on brown paper. Pare and chop fine a red beet, two onions, and half a dozen leeks, and a parsley root. Cut fine, also, half a small white cabbage.

Cook these separately, in salted water, for half an hour. Strain the fish broth upon them; put the fried fish in the tureen and pour broth and vegetables upon them. Small dumplings are often added, and sometimes part of the fish is minced fine and mixed with them.

Cabbage Soup (Norway).

Two pounds of beef shin or brisket, half a pound of salt pork, four onions, a root of celery, four quarts of water, and a teaspoonful of salt.

Boil three hours, then strain the broth and take off the fat. Melt a spoonful of butter in a saucepan, add a minced onion and a small white cabbage cut fine. Stir and cook five minutes; then add a pint of the broth, and cook one hour. Then cut the meat in small squares, thicken the broth with a large table-spoonful of flour, put the cabbage, and meat in a tureen and pour the broth upon it, and serve very hot.

Salmon Pasty (Norway and Sweden).

Two pounds of salmon cutlets, cut thin, breaded, and fried brown in butter, and left to cool.

Take two pounds of fresh pike or other fish, mince fine, and add a teaspoonful of salt, a pinch of cayenne, the juice and grated rind of a lemon, two beaten eggs, and a spoonful of melted butter. Mix all well together.

Line a large meat-pie mould with good pastry, spread a layer of the minced fish upon it, and then the salmon, with mushrooms, shrimps, and oysters in between. Cover with the rest of the pike, rounding it up in dome-shape, and lay on a thick lid of pastry, making a small hole in the centre, and covering it with some leaves of pastry.

Bake one hour in a moderate oven, and then pour into the hole a cupful of white sauce or rich fish-broth. Serve hot or cold.

Rögröd

This is a favorite dish in both Norway and Sweden, and can be made of any acid fruit juice. Take three pints of currant juice, three pints of water, one pound of sugar, and half an ounce of stick-cinnamon, and bring to a boil. Take out the cinnamon, which can be used many times, and had better be in a little bag.

Add to the boiling juice one and a half pounds of arrow-root or one pound of soaked sago, adding it slowly and carefully that it may not lump, and stirring steadily. Boil for fifteen minutes; then turn into teacups or small moulds, and serve when cold and firm. Eat with cream and sugar.

Swedish Salad

Cut enough cold chicken in small bits to fill a teacup. Take the same amount of beef-tongue, of smoked salmon, and of filets of cooked sole. Cut two boiled carrots in bits, four cold boiled potatoes, a cupful of string-beans cut in bits.

Pour over these vegetables a spoonful of oil and two of vinegar mixed, with a teaspoonful of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

Let them lie in this for an hour; mix with the meat; add four spoonfuls of mayonnaise dressing, and pile in the salad bowl, garnishing with slips of pickled beet.

Swedish Charlotte

Cut a small sponge-cake in thin slices, and cover each with whipped cream flavored with rum. Put them together again in the shape of the loaf; cover with a meringue made of three whites of eggs beaten stiff, a cup of powdered sugar added, and a few drops of vanilla. Brown in a slow oven, and serve cold.

Norwegian Charlotte

For this elaborate and most delicious charlotte will be needed a stale, round loaf of sponge-cake; quarter of a pound of almonds blanched and pounded, with a tablespoonful of rose-water, to a smooth paste; quarter of a cocoanut grated fine; two whites of eggs beaten stiff, and two tablespoonfuls of sugar added; one cup of rich boiled custard, and one cup of sweet cream, whipped to a froth.

Mix the almonds with half the prepared white of egg, and the cocoanut with the other half. Cut the cake in horizontal slices, half an inch thick, right across the loaf. On the bottom slice put some almond cream, on the next the cocoanut, and coat all but the top slice, pressing all together firmly.

Now with a large biscuit-cutter or sharp knife cut out the centre of the cake down to the bottom slice, which must not be cut. Leave the sides about an inch thick. Put the cake cut out in a bowl with the custard, and rub smooth. Then add the whipped cream, with a spoonful of orange-flower water, and fill the centre of the cake.

Ice it with three whites of eggs beaten stiff, one cup of powdered sugar, and the juice of a lemon, and set it on ice till wanted.

Campbell, Helen. In Foreign Kitchens: with Choice Recipes from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North. Roberts Brothers, 1893.

Helen Campbell

Recipes of the World

A collection of delicious recipes from around the world. Please feel free to add your own family recipes here!

View Group