Taste Sweden
Sverige
A long, cold country of forests and coast whose cooking is built on preserving, dairy, potatoes and the fika break.
Swedish food is quieter than its exports suggest. Meatballs with cream gravy, cured and pickled fish, crispbread, potatoes in every form and a national habit of lingonberry with anything rich. Dill, allspice, cardamom and white pepper do most of the seasoning. Fika, the coffee-and-bun pause, is a structural part of the working day, and cinnamon and cardamom buns are its fuel. Christmas brings the julbord, a table of herring, ham, Jansson's temptation and rice pudding that takes a week to prepare and an afternoon to eat.
6 recipes · 1 cuisine
All dishes 6
- 1 hr 5 min
Köttbullar
Swedish meatballs: beef and pork, soaked crumb, allspice, a cream gravy and a spoon of lingonberry.
Easy
- 48 hr 20 min
Gravlax
Gravad lax
Salmon cured for two days in salt, sugar and dill, sliced thin and served with sweet mustard sauce.
Easy
- 2 hr 32 min
Kanelbullar
Swedish cinnamon buns: cardamom dough, cinnamon butter, knotted and baked with pearl sugar on top.
Medium
- 20 min
Toast Skagen
Prawns in dill mayonnaise on butter-fried bread, Sweden's restaurant starter since 1958.
Very easy
- 1 hr 25 min
Jansson's temptation
Janssons frestelse
Swedish potato gratin with onions, spiced sprats and cream, baked until the top is brown and the inside is rich.
Easy
- 40 min
Pyttipanna
Pytt i panna
Swedish fried-up leftovers: diced potato, onion and meat, crisp in butter, with a fried egg and pickled beetroot.
Very easy
Regional cuisines
Think you know Sweden food?
6 quiz dishes. Optional — Passport stamps still come from cooking.
Take the Sweden food quizFood history
Sweden spent centuries as a poor farming country with short summers, which meant salting, drying, smoking, pickling and fermenting anything that could not be eaten fresh. Hanseatic trade brought spices, and cardamom stuck. Potatoes arrived in the 18th century and took over. Husmanskost, home cooking, was codified in the 20th century and then reworked by the New Nordic movement, which made Swedish chefs famous for foraged herbs and fermented everything. Immigration since the 1970s has made kebab pizza a national dish in its own right.