Here’s a thread about how certain dishes and ingredients can become a national favourite in one country, while the rest of the world looks on aghast. How can they eat that??
Swedish surströmming, French snails, Finnish Mammi, Icelandic Slátur and Robbie Burns’s favourite, the haggis, all spring to mind.
During our recent discussions about the delights of the Great British Pudding, one thing that struck me was that suet is a major ingredient in many of these glorious puds. I’ve never bought any and didn’t even know the Swedish word for it. The dictionary soon put that straight – TALG. My next question was- can you buy it in a modern Swedish supermarket. Who better to ask than @locust?
I received this very amusing reply.
Sure, Kaisfatdad, during the winter months you can buy as much talg as you need – for feeding the birds! That’s the only use of it here, balls of it being hung outdoors for the birds to stay alive during the cold winters.
I doubt that it’s available for human consumption!
Yes indeed, there they were in the Konsum supermarket yesterday, Talgbollar – suet balls. Next to the wooden birdhouses. The RSPB shop stocks them in the UK.
Nigella Lawson’s blog mentions that it is difficult nowadays to find suet outside of the UK. This was not always the case.
My Search for Suet led me to Pierceton, Indiana and a very entertaining You Tuber, Jon Townsend, who makes very well- researched, interesting videos about 18th century food. His dad started a store selling historical re-enactment material for Civil War re-enactments and film companies and Jon branched out into making related videos. I particularly enjoyed the one on Ships Biscuits where he not only explains how important they were to keep 18th century soldiers and sailors fed, but also explains how to bake them.
That belongs to a series entitled FOOD THAT TIME FORGOT. And so does the one he made about the importance of suet in 18th century US cooking. Nowadays it is almost impossible to find unless you have a pal who is a butcher or works in a slaughterhouse. Back in its heyday, suet contributed to some classic dishes.
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA SUETI
A few questions for you…
Do any of you use suet in your cooking?
Have any of you had a traumatic experience when trying a dish which was considered a great local delicacy? Or perhaps, have you had a pleasant surprise? Who’d have thought that Lamb Eyeball Mukbang could be so tasty?
When it come to National Dishes, why do many countries often choose a delicacy which most foreigners will find unpalatable?
The same goes for National Instruments. To name just two, the Gamelan and the Bagpipes can be pretty cacophonous in large numbers. Was this all a cunning ruse to scare off Sassenachs and other foreigners?
I’ll get my coat.
Here is Jon Townsend’s video on Suet.
And now Ships Biscuits..
Sadly, no happily ever-afters for suet
A few dishes you may not have tasted….
Icelandic speakers will enjoy this clip on how to make Slátur which literally means slaughter.
This was in the news recently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/c930x6z3303o
Durian.
Suet dumplings sometimes, luckily there’s a vegetarian option for suet.
Durian – lovely to eat, insufferable for anyone near you when you do
Having attended many durian parties at my former employer when they were peak season (held in the car park), I don’t mind the smell and quite like the taste – there are many different varieties / grades.
My main problem with durian is the aftertaste – you can still taste it for hours afterwards (and it makes you burp – well me anyway)
That is an hilarious, wonderfully-written bit of local journalism.
A smidgeon of hyperbole, i suspect, but I’m not complaining.
Durian Durian?
Aren’t they a South-East Asian pop band?
I used to have suet dumplings with mince & tatties when I was growing up. Make little balls of Atora and water, and then put them on top of the mince when its cooking. My mum called them doughboys. A bit like spongy Yorkshire pudding. I used to love them.
Hopefully @Hawkfall there was some flour in there too.
How can we forget the ‘joy’ of tripe. A girlfriend said it was wonderful and popped a piece of the heavily vinegared morsel in my mouth.
Reader it was disgusting.
Manufactured nearby here’s there Web page decidedly unfinished.
https://heystripe.com/
They had the magnificent slogan “Don’t talk tripe, Eat it”
I used to meet another girlfriend outside the tripe stall on the market, just another old romantic that’s me.
In other news the forerunner of the bagpipes was the shawm. Crusaders were met by a wall of sound from the sound of an army of shawms. It was said to have made them turn and flee.
Quite a few years ago I was about to embark upon a business trip to the USA and one of my colleagues asked me if I would take some Suet over for one of her family members in New York as it was very expensive to post and I was going to be very close to where she lived. I made the mistake of carrying it in my hand luggage. A US customs official told me in no uncertain terms that it could not be allowed into the USA.
Won’t make that mistake again.
Good job you haven’t tried to be a suet smuggler in 2025, @Steve.T.
ICE would have packed you off to a high-security jail in Salvador in a jiffy.
It is strictly forbidden to carry Surströmming in your hand luggage in Scandinavia. They are more likely to allow you through with a hand grenade,
Or a drone?
In fact here’s John Cale in Zurich.
I had some great food in Taiwan, that did not include “sea cucumber”
Suet gets used in our house for Christmas puddings, but we get the veggie variety as we have some vegetarians in the family. It seems to work just as well.
I’d forgotten Norwegian Gammal Ost – old cheese.
It is in a class of its own.
That poor guy really had no idea what a culinsry nightmare he was about to endure. He is not exagerating.
Like a lot of reaction wallahs he talks too much…
Also disgusting: brunost, that sweet brown cheese Norwegians are so fond of.
Also disgusting: whale, forced on us by our Norwegian friends (it was weird seeing Findus frozen whale steaks in the supermarket). Tastes fishy while having the consistency of steak – you chew and chew and it never goes away.
Very odd birds, your Norwegians.
You’ve hit the nail on the head there, @mikethep. The Norwegians practice a very perverse form of culinary nationalism, delighting in bragging about all the disgusting dishes which are national favourites.
A normal county like Italy takes great pride and pleasure in telling the world about all the delicious food you will enjoy when you come to visit. Delicious pizzas, pasta, wines and desserts ETC. Benvenuto a Italia.
By contrast the Nogs almost want to scare us all away. Come to Norway and sample our special cheeses which will traumatise you for life.
Are there any other countries that can compete with them in this peculiar kind of culinary anti-marketing?
Love a good dumpling, me.
Slight variation from the subject. My late sister-in-law, being French, had forthright opinions about food. She could not get her head around the idea of corn-on-the-cob, because that you fed to cattle as fodder.
I have previously, on this site, expressed my love for Jerusalem artichokes, especially when turned into a gorgeous warming winter soup. Because they are not related to the veg that most countries would know as artichokes, my dear sis couldn’t work out what I was describing for some time. Then it dawned. ‘Topinambur’ are reviled in France because, what with them growing so easily, they are strongly associated with the occupation, so have yet to become recherche. Give it time.
Jerusalem artichoke as you say is not an artichoke, the Jerusalem part is said to be from girasole which over the years was corrupted to Jerusalem and it was said to taste like artichoke.
Oh, I do like that story. My family will now get bored to tears of me telling it every year over the soup over Christmas.
The Jerusalem Artichoke contains a good deal of inulin, a fermentable fibre that does just that, in the lower gut. Prodigious gas formation is the outcome. (Are you with me? Gas. In the gut……..)
Always known as Jehovah’s Witnesses in our house, as the step-dter recounted the effects: “I had a couple of those Jehovah’s Witnesses at lunch and I can’t stop farting”.
That is very funny indeed. I’ll be chuckling all day as I recall it.
I was fed some large and hideously undercooked Jerusalem artichokes recently by the caterers at the Oval cricket ground. Foolishly, I ate them. The effect was several times worse than I’d expect from properly cooked ones. I was in pain for days.
I used to grow them on the allotment and took some with us when we were self catering on holiday. I made a very silky Jerusalem artichoke soup tasted lovely though I say it myself.
We drove back the next day, it was the most uncomfortable journey I think I’ve ever taken. I’ve never eaten them since.
You have inspired me to experiment with Jerusalem artíchokes, @thecheshrecat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke
Interesting to read how they were imported from North America.
Your comment about them being associated with the Occupation made me think.
Some foodstuffs remind some of us of the Good Old Days. Tucking into them again brings back happy childhood memories.
Other foodstuffs may remind others of the Bad Old Days, when there was little food and what there was needed a lot of preparation,
Some dishes could possibly fall into either of those two categories
For example, popular Swedish dish iFläsklägg med Rotmos. Ham Hock or Pork Knuckle with mashed potatoes and turnips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A4skl%C3%A4gg_med_rotmos
I ate it recently for the first time at trendy Pelikan on Södermalm and it left me rather baffled. I certainly wasn’t hungry afterwards
Even Jamie Oliver has jumped on the ham hock bandwagon.
I had a lovely roasted hock in Bremen once. Allowed to turn all to crackling, it was like eating a crunchy boot.
It was like eating a crunchy boot.
You really ought to have been a restaurant critic, @retropath2
A few words from you and the punters would be flocking in.
It sounds like they are Hungry to Hock in Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisbein
Eisbein is usually sold already cured and sometimes smoked, and then used in simple hearty dishes. Numerous regional variations exist, for example in Berlin it is served with pease pudding.[1] In southern parts of Germany it is usually roasted. In Franconia it is commonly served with mashed potatoes or sauerkraut, in Austria with horseradish and mustard instead.
The German name (literally: ‘ice leg’) has associations with the practice of using a pig’s leg-bone for ice skating. In southern Germany, the common preparation is known as Schweinshaxe.[citation needed]
The name “Eisbein” for the German dish of pickled pork knuckle has been in use since the 10th century. Initially, “īsbēn” was a technical term referring to the hip-bone and surrounding bones used by hunters and doctors. The word evolved to its current form and meaning in German cuisine, though the exact date of its culinary adoption is not specified
Here is the classic Berlin Pork knuckle.
And here’s a Yukon delicaCy
All these culinary memories reminded of the time I spend a few days in Piteå in the north of Sweden and got to sample their local speciality, a dumpling called Palt. I ate at the papermill canteen where they were on the lunch menu.
I’m used to kroppkakor, the far smaller Oland dumplíngs. Their Piteå cousins are like small cannonballs and it felt like I’d eaten a lump of medieval artillery
Dumplings must be one of the world’s favourites foodstuffs. Every country has its own regional variation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumpling
DO THE FUNKY DUMPLING…
Having worked in food retail since I was 17 (first a butcher shop, then a tiny grocery store that gradually became bigger and now would be called a supermarket I guess), I’ve seen a lot of old favourite ingredients lose their audience, as the older generations have kicked the bucket.
At the butcher’s we used to sell tons of fläskben – a detail that isn’t even on Swedish Wikipedia and I have no idea where it is situated on the pig…I’m guessing it’s their leg bones after removing most of the meat for other use?? The English literal translation would be “pork bones”.
They came in two varieties, raw or brined. Imagine a big Flintstone type bone with a few left-over clumps of meat at both ends (but very little actual meat, mostly just bone). Cheap as dirt, we sold a lot of it all the time, but especially the week before payday.
I’ve never tried it, but apparently this was the poor man’s ham hock (if boiled) or ribs (if grilled). And the gnawed off bone probably made a weak broth for that last day before the money came in.
Doesn’t exist anymore, or at least I wouldn’t know where to go to buy it!
At that time it was also still fairly common to sell Spickemat – brined and dried and/or smoked items like sausage, ham or herring. It translate to “salt food”, and wow! it was unbelievably salt, and disgusting.
I think I’ve told this story before, but here we go again:
At the grocery store, in the 90s before these things disappeared, a foreign gentleman came in to the store and demanded to be reimbursed for the salami he had bought earlier, which had gone bad. I looked at the package and saw that he had bought Spickekorv (“salt sausage”) by mistake, as it very much looked like salami when sliced. I gave him his money back but explained that it wasn’t salami and actually was supposed to taste that way, and he looked shocked and very unconvinced…and I don’t blame him a bit. Vile stuff, from the days of no refrigeration and large amounts of alcohol enjoyed with each meal.
We also sold Paltbröd, a bread baked from pork blood and rye flour, which is then dried to last longer. When it’s time to eat (yum…) you boil it, and serve it (usually) with melted butter and lingonberries; or if you want to be fancy; with some béchamel sauce and fried salt pork.
This traditional dish is thankfully all but extinct, but you can still sometimes find it in the freezer section of the supermarket. I doubt that anyone under 80 will eat it.
Another dish left in the past is one we’d still sell portions of to older customers in the 80s, before it left for good; Sillbullar med Korintsås (“Herringballs with Corinth Raisin Sauce”).
This was a mix of ground meat and ground herring made into large balls or patties and fried. Served with a sort of sweet & sour sauce. All of the pensioners would queue up for these once a week when they were made (in-house). Very few people now would be able to answer the question “what is a sillbulle“? Good riddance, I say.
Now, I love most husmanskost, as the older dishes are known as – classic everyday dishes, usually from quite cheap ingredients, seasonal and mostly healthy; but I draw the line at the above monstrosities, and that verdict seems to be unanimous!
Come on everybody.
A big round of applause for @Locust for that wonderfully amusing description of SWEDISH FOOD THAT TIME FORGOT.
The poor man’s ham hock??
I thought that ham hock was for poor men. Not surprisingly,, back in the bad old days there were even poorer men.
Your description of Spickekorv was hilarious.
Vile stuff, from the days of no refrigeration and large amounts of alcohol enjoyed with each meal.
Believe it or not, spiclekorv is considered a delicacy in some oarts of Sweden
https://smakasverige.se/mat/kott-och-charkuterier/spickekorv
This evening i was reading about Blodpalt from Norrland. Basically this is PITEÅ DUMPLINGS with added blood.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blodpalt&wprov=rarw1
This dates back in time.
Strangely, Paltbröd is not a type of Palt, so the fact that two dishes with the word Palt in their names exists and both of them happen to have blood as one of their ingredients is quite interesting.
If you didn’t already know about it and just heard the name Paltbröd, nothing in that name would warn you about the blood! And you’d question where the Palt was in the dish.
But if they had wanted to warn people about these things, they probably would have called Surströmming (“Sour Herring”) Rutten Bajsfisk (“Rotten Poo-fish”) instead! 😀