NORDIC COOKING. In the article I linked to in yesterday’s post, the description of how cod was prepared in medieval Greenland was striking: “’One common way of preparing cod was to gut it, dry it, and then cook it in a pot for three or four hours and eat your porridge, bones and all.’” I was reminded of the depiction of nineteenth-century Danish cooking in BABETTE’S FEAST (the two Danish sisters teaching the great French chef how to cook dried cod: “You boil it….”) I have reason to believe that Danish cooking had improved by the twentieth century.
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I will never forgive Babette for what she does to those poor quails.
I believe that some fish was also smoked or pickled and then buried and located later by smell. The following it from Wikipedia. (They have more on cooking and eating it. Ugh!!!!)
Lutefisk is made from air-dried whitefish (normally cod, but ling is also used), prepared with lye, in a sequence of particular treatments. The first treatment is to soak the stockfish in cold water for five to six days (with the water changed daily). The saturated stockfish is then soaked in an unchanged solution of cold water and lye for an additional two days. The fish will swell during this soaking, attaining an even larger size than in its original (undried) state, while its protein content decreases by more than 50 percent, producing its famous jelly-like consistency. When this treatment is finished, the fish (saturated with lye) has a pH value of 11–12, and is therefore caustic. To make the fish edible, a final treatment of yet another four to six days of soaking in cold water (also changed daily) is needed. Eventually, the lutefisk is ready to be cooked.
In Finland, the traditional reagent used is birch ash. It contains high amounts of potassium carbonate and hydrocarbonate, giving the fish more mellow treatment than sodium hydroxide (lyestone). It is important not to incubate the fish too long in the lye, because saponification of the fish fats may occur, effectively rendering the fish fats into soap. The term for such spoiled fish in Finnish is saippuakala (soap fish).
This reminds me of the old Saturday Night live bit: “Is a floor wax or is it a desert topping?” It’s both. In Finland, it would be, “Is it a fish dinner or is it soap?”
I am also reminded of Garrison Keiller’s complaints that my people roamed and conquered and wound up with lutefisk, while Marco Polo traveled to China and came back with pasta.
And painted themselves blue.