The Smorgasbord – Sweden's Culinary Gift to the
World
To
start with it was just something to occupy early-comers until all the
dinner guests had arrived. It grew to become an hors d’oeuvre
table, before eventually becoming a full-blown lunch or dinner, and
achieved renown abroad where, however, it can take on forms peculiar
to the purist. So if you want to try a real Swedish smörgåsbord,
there are certain things you should know.
History
Its
origins go back some five hundred years. In the beginning it was a
brännvin
(aquavit)
table, although there was some food apart from the alcohol. After
becoming a popular hors d'oeuvre among the middle classes, new dishes
were added in the nineteenth century. In the early railway age it was
common for station restaurants to provide it, until trains had their
own restaurant cars.
It
remained an hors d'oeuvre, however, until much later, although during
the 1912 summer Olympic Games in Stockholm there were restaurants
offering it as a stand-alone meal and there were 'smorgasbord' (now
without the Swedish letters ö
and å)
restaurants in New York in the 1920s. But it did not become
internationally known on a wider scale until the 1932 World Expo,
also in New York, when the restaurant in the Swedish pavilion had a
well-laden, rotating “Merry-Go-Round” table.
Its status as a starter to the main meal finally
disappeared for good in the early 1960s, since when, with the
addition of still more dishes, it has been complete in itself.
How to eat it
Swedes
are often amused at the sight of foreign visitors piling a great
mixture of dishes onto their plate, something the experienced would
never do. The approved practice is to follow the recommendations made
by a leading Swedish chef and restaurateur more than fifty years ago.
You should go to the table five times, each time taking a new plate
and fresh cutlery. The first visit is for the various kinds of
pickled North Sea herring, perhaps also its smaller cousin the Baltic
herring, plus a boiled potato and a slice of crisp bread and cheese,
consumed with a glass
of aquavit.
Visit number two is for other fish dishes, particularly
salmon, boiled and/or cured and boiled eel. Number three is for cold
cuts of meat and salads, number four for hot dishes, which will
almost certainly include Janson's Temptation (containing anchovies cooked in
cream) and meatballs, and finally there are the desserts, which were
the latest addition to the table.
What does it mean?
Literally,
smörgåsbord
means 'butter goose table', which may seem a strange name to give it,
especially as it has never contained goose cooked in butter or
anything else. But it derives from the time when people churned their
own butter. During the process small blobs somewhat resembling the
shape of a goose, would rise to the surface. Such a blob was thought
ideal to spread on a slice of bread and the result is still called a
smörgås,
although it normally has some other topping or toppings in addition
to butter, ie it is an open sandwich. And in its earlier days the
smörgåsbord
had that kind of character.http://stanleybloom.weebly.com
