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Papua New GuineaFlavors · Sweden
Wheat bread with cardamom, cut open at the top, filled with almond paste and whipped cream and topped with the cut-off lid dusted with sugar. It’s the sweet eaten on fettisdagen, the Fat Tuesday, and descends from the hetvägg, bread eaten soaked in warm milk.
Traditional sweet from Sweden
Also known as: Semlor (plural), fastlagsbulle, fettisdagsbulle, hetvägg (servida em leite quente)
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Semla — Sweden
The semla is the sweet of fettisdagen, the Fat Tuesday, the last of the festive days before Lent. It is a soft wheat bun scented with cardamom, from which a lid is cut off at the top; the removed crumb is mixed with almond paste and milk and returned to the bun, which is then given a generous layer of whipped cream and the lid on top, dusted with sugar.
The tradition of eating special breads before fasting goes back to the Middle Ages, and the semla has changed a lot in name, shape and ingredients over the centuries. Its predecessor is the hetvägg, a name recorded at the end of the 17th century and derived from the German heisse Wecken, hot buns; the Swedish name is often misinterpreted as “warm wall.” In the 18th century the hetvägg was a luxury bread, served in a bowl with warm milk. The word semla comes from the German Semmel, which goes back to the Latin simila, fine wheat flour.
A well-known story says that King Adolf Frederick died on February 12, 1771, a Fat Tuesday, after a banquet that ended with hetvägg. Historians treat the link between the sweet and the king’s death as an anecdote.
Over time, wheat flour, sugar and almond paste became more accessible, and the custom of coffee with sweets brought the semla to its current form. Once eaten only on Fat Tuesday, the semla began to appear in bakeries weeks earlier, and new variations appear every year. Some still serve it the old way, as hetvägg, in a bowl of warm milk.
Sweden
The Fat Tuesday sweet eaten across the country, eaten in Sweden since the old form of hetvägg, soaked in warm milk.
Leavened dough bread made with wheat flour, milk, butter, sugar and cardamom; filling of almond paste mixed with the crumb and milk; whipped cream and powdered sugar.
With coffee, removing the lid first to eat the cream together with it, or the old-fashioned way, as hetvägg, in a bowl of warm milk.
Fettisdagen, the Fat Tuesday before Lent; bakeries sell them in the preceding weeks.
Your questions
On fettisdagen, the Fat Tuesday before Lent. Bakeries start selling it weeks earlier.
It is the semla served in a bowl with warm milk, the oldest way to eat it. The name comes from the German heisse Wecken, hot buns.
Almond paste mixed with the bun’s crumb and whipped cream, under a lid dusted with sugar.
Flavors of Sweden
Raw salmon fillet cured in a mixture of salt, sugar and dill, sliced very thin and served with hovmästarsås, a sweet mustard-and-dill sauce. The name means “buried salmon” and recalls the old method of preserving the fish under the ground.
Sweet yeast bread flavored with cardamom, rolled with butter, sugar and cinnamon, and topped with pearl sugar. It is the pastry most associated with fika, the coffee break, and even has its own day in the Swedish calendar, Kanelbullens dag, on October 4.
Small meatballs made with ground meat, fried in butter and served with cream sauce, potatoes, lingonberry jam and pickled cucumber. They are Sweden’s best-known home dish, with the first printed recipe appearing in a 1755 cookbook.
Dome-shaped cake with layers of sponge cake, raspberry jam, vanilla cream, and lots of whipped cream, covered by a green marzipan sheet and decorated with a pink marzipan rose. The name recalls the three princess daughters of Prince Carl, pupils of Jenny Åkerström, the recipe’s author.
Tall, hollow, lace-like cake made from eggs, sugar and potato starch, poured little by little onto a rotating spit in front of heat, layer by layer. Decorated with white or pink icing, it is a celebratory sweet from Skåne, and the name Skånsk spettkaka is protected by the European Union.
Cubes of beef tenderloin, potato and onion browned separately and served side by side, with a raw egg yolk in the center and mustard or mustard cream. Named after the Hotel Rydberg, which operated on Gustav Adolfs torg in Stockholm, where the dish is said to have originated.
Baked saffron rice pudding tart with eggs, cream and almonds, yellow in color, served warm or cold with salmbär jam and whipped cream. Despite the name “pancake,” it’s baked in a pan. It is the sweet most associated with the island of Gotland.
A white stick candy with red spiral stripes and peppermint flavor, pulled and twisted by hand. It originated in Gränna, on the shore of Lake Vättern, where the widow Amalia Eriksson obtained a license to make it in 1859, and the town remains the center of its production.
Baked dessert made from curdled milk using rennet, enriched with eggs, cream, sugar and almonds, with a moist, granular texture. Served warm with jam and whipped cream, it is the festival specialty most associated with the Småland region, with Swedish records dating back to the 16th century.
Large potato dough dumplings filled with bacon or pork and onion, cooked in water and served with melted butter and red bilberry jam. The Öland version, gray and made with raw potato, and the Småland version, lighter and made with cooked potato, are the best known.
Boiled dumpling made from raw grated potato and wheat or barley flour, filled with pork, served with butter and red bilberry jam. It’s an everyday food in northern Sweden, and the name comes from the town of Piteå, considered the Swedish center of palt.
Baltic herring, lightly salted and fermented, canned in summer; strong-smelling with a salty, acidic taste. It’s eaten on the thin flatbread tunnbröd with potato, red onion and sour cream, in a communal meal at the end of summer. The tradition links the dish to the Norrland coast and the island of Ulvön in the High Coast (Höga Kusten).
