SWEDEN: Swedish Christmas Bazaar at House of Sweden

We went to the House of Sweden (Swedish Embassy ), a gorgeous building inside and out, that sits on the Georgetown waterfront for the annual Swedish Christmas Bazaar. The place was packed, and we’re told it is like that every year. At their bazaar, there was the typical food for sale (thankfully no ticket system like the regular bazaars) and the usual Swedish merchandize. We also learned that the word smörgåsbord is Swedish, meaning a buffet style meal with a large variety of items to eat.

The one stample of Swedish cuisine does, in fact, seem to be the meatballs and lingonberry sauce. The lingonberry is plentiful in Sweden. IHOP’s Swedish pancakes with lingonberry sauce is actually surprisingly authentic. The Swedish pancakes (crepes) are similar to the French crêpes. The traditional pancake in Sweden is served with whipped cream and jam, and that is how they were served at the House of Sweden (we had strawberry jam). They can also have savory fillings.

According to Wikipedia’s smörgåsbord:

The members of the Swedish merchant and upper class in fourteenth-century Sweden and Finland served schnapps table
(brännvinsbord), a small buffet presented on a side table offering a variety of hors d’oeuvres served prior to a meal before sitting at the dinner table. The most simple brännvinsbord was bread, butter, cheese, herring and several types of liqueurs, but smoked salmon, sausages and cold cuts were also served. The brännvinsbord was served as an appetizer for a gathering of people and eaten while standing before a dinner or supper, often two to five hours before dinner, sometimes with the men and women in separate rooms. The smörgåsbord became popular in the mid-seventeenth century, when the food moved from the side table to the main table and service began containing both warm and cold dishes. Smörgåsbord was also served as an appetizer in hotels and later at railway stations, before the dining cars time for the guests. Restaurants in Stockholm at the 1912 Olympic Games stopped serving smörgåsbord as an appetizer and started serving them instead as a main course.

We had the requisite open faced sandwich, which is so popular in Scandinavian cuisine, except the Swedish sandwich was topped with meatballs. We also had some hot dogs; unlike American hot dogs, these were thinner and much longer. They did not fit inside the bun and were served with mustard. These are called falukorv, and a large traditional Swedish sausage made of a grated mixture of pork and beef or veal with potato starch flour and mild spices:

The history of Falukorv reaches back to the Falun copper mine during the 16th and 17th centuries, where ox hide was used for ropes and some of the meat remaining after slaughter was used for sausages. The sausage was based on the Lyoner sausage; the recipe, in which the meat is smoked and salted, was probably brought to the region by Germans working in the mine.

The tradition of preparing the meat in this way was revitalised in the late 19th century by the butcher Anders Olsson, whose initiative led to the development of the modern Falukorv, which uses a mixture of pork and beef or veal. Falukorv has enjoyed high popularity since then.

The designation Falukorv received protection in Sweden in 1973. (Wikipedia – Falukorv)

The most interesting item we tried was the Princess Cake, also known as the Prinsesstårta. We bought a large slice of this cake, which is layers of white cake with whipped cream, jam and then a layer of marzipan that was sprinkled with powdered sugar. According to the Wikipedia Princess Cake entry: ”the original recipe first appeared in the 1930s ‘Prinsessornas Kokbok’ cookbook, which was published by Jenny Åkerström, a teacher of the daughters of Prince Carl, Duke of Västergötland. The cake was originally called ‘Grön tårta’ (green cake), but was given the name ‘prinsesstårta’ or ‘princess cake’ because the princesses were said to have been especially fond of the cake.”

We also learned was that Swedish Fish really are Swedish. The candy was made by a Swedish candy company called Malaco. They decided to start exporting to the North American market in the 1960s and 1970s and created Swedish Fish and Swedish Berries. The original color was red with a unique flavor, perhaps lingonberry. However, in Sweden they are called “pastel fish” (pastellfiskar), are paler in color, and more translucent. The are less sweet and more fruit-flavored, and also come in a licorice and salty licorice flavor.

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