One of the real staples of the Swedish cuisine is the Falukorv, a large diameter sausage made from blended meat, fat, potato flour, onion and spices. It was originally made from the meat of the oxen used for transports to the…
The Mazarin is a traditional Swedish pastry named after the French-Italian Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661), the successor of Cardinal Richelieu famous from the Three Musketeers. Exactly why it’s named after him is a bit confusing, but Sweden has always had…
Usually, not doing things “the proper way” is a sure sign that the result will not be as good as it could. It’s usually something bland that might resemble the original article but is just something else. Risotto is one…
Eggs Benedict is one of the ultimate brunch dishes. It has a fair bit of history, with multiple origin stories from the late 1800’s. In one of these Lemuel Benedict, a New York stockbroker, told the New Yorker in the…
Although not really that old, the history of the Spaghetti Carbonara is still not clear. Of course it’s Italian, but with that settled everything else gets a bit more muddled. The consensus seems to be that it was first served…
Semlor, or fastlagsbullar, are wheat buns filled with almond paste and topped with cream eaten on Fettisdagen (the Fat Tuesday). It might not sound that appetizing and for most of the history it probably wasn’t that amazing either, at least…
My favorite drink is the Sidecar. The story goes that it was invented by an American army captain at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris during or just after World War I. He used to show up in a motorcycle…
One of the most known French dishes, at least for us in the Nordics, is the Boeuf Bourguignon. Perhaps the most classic fall stew, rich and filled with meat cooked until it barely keeps itself together. However, in its original…
Hotell Rydberg was one of the first proper hotels in Stockholm, Sweden. Built in 1857 and demolished in 1914, it was run by Jean-François Régis Cadier who would later found the Grand Hôtel that’s still going strong and harbors the…
In the Nordics it’s now strawberry season. In case you don’t know these are, by some considerable margin, the best strawberries in the world. There’s something about the colder climate and less intense sun (but longer days) that makes the berries…