Swedish
Ostkaka (Baked Rennet Curd Cake)
A Swedish curd cake: milk with a little flour in it is set with rennet, the whey is drained off, and the curd is mixed with egg, cream, sugar and almonds and baked. The milk is set twice, once by rennet and once by egg and heat. Eaten lukewarm from the middle outwards, with jam and whipped cream.
Tunnbröd (Thin Flatbread Raised with Baker's Ammonia)
Northern Sweden's thin bread: a wheat-and-barley dough rolled to 2mm and baked for two or three minutes in the hottest oven you have. It is raised with yeast and with baker's ammonia, a salt that turns to gas on heat alone, with no acid, and leaves nothing behind in the bread — which is why the bread has to be thin enough for that gas to get out. Baked soft it is used as a wrap; dried out it is eaten crisp.
Janssons Frestelse (Potato and Sprat Gratin)
Sweden's potato gratin: matchstick potatoes and onions softened in butter, layered with Swedish ansjovis, covered in cream and baked under breadcrumbs. The ansjovis on the label is not an anchovy but sprat in a cure of sugar and spice, so the seasoning of the whole dish comes out of one tin rather than a salt cellar — salt, sweetness and spice at once.
Hasselback Potatoes (Accordion-Cut Roast Potatoes)
Potatoes cut into close slices that stop short of the base, then roasted: a Swedish dish first made in 1953 at the Hasselbacken restaurant in Stockholm. The cuts fan open in the oven, so the thin tops go crisp like crisps while the uncut base cooks soft like a baked potato. There are two kinds of cooking in one potato, and the depth of the cut decides how much of each you get.
Kladdkaka (Sticky Chocolate Cake with No Leavening)
The Swedish chocolate cake pulled from the oven while the middle is still batter. No baking powder, no yeast, and the butter is melted rather than creamed, so there is no whipped air either. Nothing lifts it at all, and that is the cake rather than a fault in it. The story goes that it began in 1938, when baking powder was hard to come by in Sweden and an American brownie recipe was made without it.
Prinsesstårta (Marzipan-Domed Cream Cake)
A Swedish cake: sponge, jam and custard under a tall dome of whipped cream, sheeted over in pale green marzipan. What decides this cake is not the half minute when the marzipan goes on but the step before it. The cream dome has to be chilled genuinely firm for the marzipan to settle taut over it; on soft cream even a perfectly rolled sheet wrinkles and slides.
Kanelbulle (Cardamom Cinnamon Bun with Pearl Sugar)
Sweden's cinnamon bun, and a different thing from the iced American cinnamon roll. Cardamom is ground into the dough itself, the top gets coarse pearl sugar instead of cream-cheese frosting, and rather than being rolled into a spiral the strip is folded and tied into a knot. The result is far less sweet, with the spice in front. Sweden has a Kanelbullens dag on 4 October, and the bun sits at the centre of fika.
Swedish Meatballs (Köttbullar)
Sweden's classic home dish (made famous by IKEA): small meatballs browned and simmered in a creamy gravy, served with mashed potato and lingonberry jam. It's all about the sweet-savory-tart balance.