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Papua New GuineaFlavors · Finland
Salmon soup with potato, carrot and leek, in a broth finished with cream and fresh dill on top. It’s a nationwide dish, served in lunch restaurants, cafés and homes, almost always with rye bread.
Traditional dish from Finland
Also known as: kermainen lohikeitto, laxsoppa
Illustrative images. The pictures in this guide are illustrations based on the real place, not photographs, and may differ from it.
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lohikeitto — Finland
Lohikeitto contains pieces of salmon, potato, carrot and leek cooked in a fish broth. In the most common version, the broth is enriched with cream and becomes light-colored and velvety; chopped fresh dill is sprinkled on top just before serving.
It’s a winter and lunchtime soup. Visit Finland describes it as a comforting dish, found in lunch restaurants, traditional eateries and home cooking from north to south. There isn’t a specific region of origin: it’s a dish of the whole country.
In the 2017 vote that chose the national dish, the panel of experts from the ELO Foundation, tasked with selecting finalists that represented the variety of Finnish cuisine, declared the fish soup their favourite. The usual accompaniment is rye bread with butter.
Finland
Lohikeitto is a nationwide dish with no single region of origin: it appears in lunch restaurants and homes from north to south.
Salmon, potato, carrot, leek, broth, cream, fresh dill and salt.
Hot, served in a deep bowl, with dill on top and rye bread with butter at the side.
Everyday lunch, more in demand in the cold months.
Your questions
The Finnish salmon soup with potato, carrot and leek in a broth enriched with cream, finished with fresh dill.
With rye bread and butter. It’s served hot, in a deep bowl, mainly at lunch.
In lunch restaurants, Finnish cuisine restaurants and market hall cafés across the country.
Flavors of Finland
A dark Easter sweet made from rye flour and rye malt slowly cooked until they sweeten on their own, with bitter orange peel. It is served cold with heavy cream and sugar, and appears throughout the country before Easter.
Dark, dense, sour bread made from whole rye flour and natural fermentation, formed round, with or without a hole, or dried. It appears at almost every meal and was chosen as Finland’s national food in a 2017 public vote.
Traditional farmhouse beer made from barley malt and other cereals, filtered over juniper branches in a wooden trough without boiling the wort. Its production method is protected by the European Union and it is included in Finland’s inventory of living heritage.
Open, oval pastry made with a thin rye dough, with pleated edges and filled with rice porridge, potato or barley, served with egg butter. It comes from Karelia and its method of preparation is protected by the European Union.
Oven-baked pudding made from semolina or rice porridge with milk, eggs and cardamom, served in squares with dried plum cream and whipped cream. The islanders of Åland chose it as the dish of the century.
Small round open tart made with a rye crust, filled with mashed potato sweetened by the potato itself and crushed lingonberry. It is the specialty of the Kainuu region and has a protected geographical indication from the European Union.
Rye dough bread filled with lake fish and pork belly, baked for hours until the crust darkens. It’s the food of Kuopio’s market square, sold hot, and its method of preparation is protected by the European Union.
Sliced reindeer meat, sautéed with onion and butter and simmered in broth or beer, served with mashed potatoes and lingonberries. It’s the dish most associated with reindeer herding in Lapland.
Fried meat pie, split open and filled with ham and boiled egg, with mustard, ketchup and cucumber salad. With only one of the two fillings it’s called atomi. It’s the snack sold at the market square and harbour stalls in Lappeenranta.
Lamb and potatoes slow-roasted for hours in a wood-fired oven in a long birch wooden trough called särä. It is Lemi’s traditional food in South Karelia, served with barley bread.
A small cylindrical cake made with almond and cookie crumbs, moistened with rum or punch and topped with a ring of icing with raspberry jam in the center. It is named after the national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, who lived in Porvoo.
Thin, flattened half-moon pastry, fried in oil, filled with meat or apple jam. It’s Savonlinna’s specialty, sold at the market square next to the steamboat passenger harbor.
A black sausage made from blood and pork with ground cereal, sold hot at Tampere’s market squares and served with lingonberry jam. The city’s tourism board calls it Tampere’s emblematic dish.
