Svenskt Mat
For several weeks, my friend Cotton has been promising me a gift in recognition of my forthcoming trip, and that I’m currently learning Swedish. She wouldn’t, however, tell me what it was until we met today with a group of friends at The Oaks at Neutral Bay.
What a pleasure it was, discovering she had found a book called “Swedish Food” at a nearby “op shop”, which she’d picked up for the grand sum of one dollar. Although inexpensive, I’d class it as “absolutely priceless”, as it contains “200 selected dishes of good swedish food”.
Swedish Food is the work of the Home Economics Department of the publisher in collaboration with Mrs. Emmie Berg, graduated from Cordon Bleu, Paris, and former resident of Montclair, NJ, who has compiled and edited the recipes especially for this book.
The book contains many of the recipes you might expect, including more varieties of herring than you thought were humanly possible. These include “Pickled Salt Herring”, “Herring Salad”, “Marinated Fresh Sardines” and “Fish In Aspic”. Surprisingly, the book also contains recipes you might not instantly associate with Sweden such as “Stuffed Cabbage Rolls” and “Pork or Bacon Pancake”.
I don’t know if they ever sold it in Sweden, but it was obviously popular for a while back in the 1960s, as the book proudly proclaims, by the the eleventh edition, they had already printed 105,000 copies.
I’m not sure if I’ll actually cook anything from the book, as every meal looks like a recipe for early onset heart-disease, but it’s sure to be a talking point for Swedish class on Tuesday night. Thanks Cotton.
Any idea which op shop she bought that at? I’ve been taking a lot of stuff to charity shops lately and among one of those batches was that exact same book with exactly the same wear-and-tear marks that one shows! Wouldn’t it be hilarious if it was the same book!
Not sure. Cotton? But in response to popular demand – well one person actually – I’ve scanned a couple of the inside pages.
St Vinnies Newtown. was it damien’s?
i think i have a swedish cookbook but it doesn’t have those great hand-painted-look coloured pictures. i’ve bought them over the years but often donate them. i churn stuff over.
i love that book! we must eat something cooked from it! preferably not 100% cream/sugar/salt/flour/lard.
it’s more Atkins than low-fat.
Hahahaha! Newtown Vinnies! That’s one of the op shops I took some of my old stuff to. It must be the one I chucked out. That’s hilarious – what a bizarre coincidence!
In future I’ll have to run my prospective op shop donations past James, in case there’s anything he wants in there. ;-)
We are of course talking about a “specialist market” for Swedish cookbooks in an otherwise isolated country, so it’s really 1 degree of separation and not 6 degrees we’re talking about.
that’s amazing!
Damien: u owe me $1!
Did u cook any recipes out of it?
I don’t know how u could have given that away, it’s brilliant. the pics are … yum.