Finnish Meals and Dishes, 1896
A look at the dining habits and favorite meals of Finland in the late 19th century.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Through Finland in Carts by Ethel Bielliana Tweedie, 1897.
The island Ilkeasaari is the scene of a huge family gathering each summer, after a truly Finnish fashion, for besides the big house, which is a sort of rendezvous for every one, the married sons and daughters have also their own summer residences within a stone's throw, the parents' house is a general dining-hall on Sundays and sometimes on other days.
Could any more delightful household be imagined? Clever and interesting in every way, with advanced ideas and wide interests, their home almost cosmopolitan in its English, French, and German literature, the elder folk ready and willing to chat on any theme in several tongues, the children talking Finnish to the servants, French to their governess, or Swedish to their parents, it was altogether an ideal family life in every sense, and more than charming to the strangers to whom Ilkeasaari opened its doors and gave such a kindly welcome.
It is only in the homes of the people, rich and poor, one can learn anything of their characteristics. One may live in the large hotels of London, Paris, St. Petersburg, or Eome, and yet know almost nothing of the nations in whose midst we find ourselves. Food is the same all over Europe, waiters wear regulation black coats and white ties, drawing-rooms and reading-rooms contain the Times, the Kolnische Zeitung, or the Novoe Vremya; and when, guide-book in hand, we walk through the streets to visit the museums, we imagine we are learning the innermost lives of the people, of whom we generally know absolutely nothing. One week in the smallest private house teaches us more than one month in the largest hotel in Europe. "All very well," says the reader, "but how are we to get into the private houses?"
Ah, there is the rub. "We must open our own doors first; we must learn some languages, that golden key to travel, and when foreigners come into our midst with introductions, we must show them our homes and our lives if we want them to do the same for us. As it is, that humiliating cry is always sounding in our ears —
"English people never speak anything but English, and they are inhospitable to strangers; they are a proud nation and cold."
It is a libel, a hideous libel; but one which is, unfortunately, believed all over the Continent by foreigners not thoroughly acquainted with English folk in their own homes.
The Finnish summer is not long, but it is light and warm, the average temperature being as much higher than our own as it is lower in winter, and the people certainly enjoy both seasons to the full. Every country-house is surrounded by balconies, and on them all meals are served in the summer. We were fortunate enough to dine in many family circles, and to see much of the life of the rich, as well as the life of the poor.
One of the greatest features of a high-class Finnish meal is the Smorgasbord. On a side-table in every dining-room rows of little appetising dishes are arranged, and in the middle stands a large silver urn, brannvin, containing at least a couple of liqueurs or schnapps, each of which comes out of a different tap. Every man takes a small glass of brandy, which is made in Finland from corn, and is very strong. No brandy is allowed to be imported from Russia or vice versa, a rule very strictly adhered to in both countries. Having had their drink and probably Skalad ("I drink your health") to their respective friends, each takes a small plate, knife, and fork from the pile placed close at hand, and helps himself to such odds and ends as he fancies before returning to the dining-table to enjoy them.
Generally four or five things are heaped on each plate, but they are only small delicacies they do not materially interfere with the appetite. Usually in summer the Smorgasbord contains —
Salt, graf lax, raw or smoked salmon.
Radiser, radishes.
Ost, cheese of various kinds, shaved very thin and eaten with black bread and butter, Bondost and Baueruk being two favourite kinds among the peasantry.
Kaviar, which is quite excellent and unlike anything we have in England, being the whole eggs of the sturgeon instead of a messy black compound.
Renstek, smoked reindeer, which is not nearly so nice as it is when eaten fresh in the winter in Norway.
Agg, cold hard-boiled eggs cut in slices and arranged with sardines or anchovies.
Ost omelette, a delicious sort of custard or omelette, made with cheese and served hot, although everything else on the side-table is cold.
Mushrooms cooked in cream is another favourite dish.
Then small glass plates with slices of cold eel in jelly, salmon in jelly, tongue, ham, potted meat, etc., complete the Smorgasbord, which was often composed of fifteen or twenty dishes.
These delicacies are many of them very nice, but as the same things appear at each meal three times a day, one gets heartily sick of them in the end, and, to an English mind, they certainly seem out of place at breakfast time.
There are many excellent breads in Finland —
Frans brod is really French bread; but anything white is called Frans brod, and very good it is, as a rule.
Bag brod, or rye bread, is the ordinary black bread of the country, made in large flat loaves.
Halkaka, the peasants' only food in some parts, is baked two or three times a year, so they put the bread away in a loft or upon the kitchen rafters; consequently, by the time the next baking day comes round it is as hard as a brick. A knife often cannot cut it. It is invariably sour, some of the last mixing being always left in the tub or bucket, so that the necessary acidity may be ensured.
Knackerbrod is a thin kind of cake, made of rye and corn together, something like Scotch oatcake, with a hole in the middle, so that it may be strung up in rows like onions on a stick in the kitchen. When thin and fresh it is excellent, but when thick and stale a dog biscuit would be about equally palatable.
Wiborgs kringla, called in Finnish Wiipurin rinkeli, is a great speciality, its real home and origin being Wiborg itself. It is a sort of cake, but its peculiarity is that it is baked on straw, some of the straw always adhering to the bottom. It is made in the form of a true lover's knot, of the less fantastic kind, and a golden sign of this shape hangs outside to determine a baker's shop; even in Petersburg and in the north of Finland a modified representation of the Wiborgs kringla also denotes a bakery.
Having partaken of the odds and ends mentioned, the ordinary midday meal or dinner begins, usually between two and four o'clock.
The hostess, who sits at the head of the table, with her husband generally on one side and her most honoured guest on the other, with two huge soup-tureens before her, asks those present whether they will have soup or filbunke, a very favourite summer dish. This is made from fresh milk which has stood in a tureen till it turns sour and forms a sort of curds, when it is eaten with sugar and powdered ginger. It appears at every meal in the summer, and is excellent on a hot day. It must be made of fresh milk left twenty-four hours in a warm kitchen for the cream to rise, and twenty-four hours in the cellar to cool afterwards. The castor sugar is invariably served in a very tall silver basin — that is to say, the bowl, with its two elegant handles, stands on a well-modelled pillar about 8 or 1 inches high, altogether a very superior and majestic form of sugar basin.
There are two special drinks in Finland — one for the rich, the other for the poor. Mjod is one of the most delicious beverages imaginable. It is not champagne, and not cider, but a sort of effervescing drink of pale yellow colour made at the breweries, and extremely refreshing on a hot day. It costs about one shilling and sixpence a bottle, sometimes more, and is often handed round during an afternoon call with the coffee and marmelader, the famous Russian sweetmeats made of candied fruits.
The other drink is called in Swedish Svagdricka, but as it is really a peasant drink, and as the peasants speak Finnish, it is generally known as Kalja, pronounced "Kal-e-yah." It looks black, and is really small beer. Very small indeed it is, too, with a nasty burnt taste, and the natives up-country all make it for themselves, each farm having half a dozen or twenty hop poles of its own, which flavours the Kalja for the whole party for a year, so its strength of hop or amount of bubble is not very great.
From the middle of June till the middle of July we ate wild strawberries three times a day with sugar and cream! They simply abound, and very delicious these little Mansikka are. So plentiful are they that Suomi is actually known as "strawberry land."
There are numbers of wild berries in Finland; indeed, they are quite a speciality, and greet the traveller daily in soup, — sweet soups being very general, — or they are made into delicious syrups, are served as compote with meat, or transformed into puddings...
"Will you have some sweetbread?" we were once asked, but as we were drinking coffee at the moment we rather wondered why we should be going back to the entrees — our stupidity, of course. Sweetbread is the name given to all simple forms of cake in Finland; a great deal of it is eaten, and it is particularly good.
At dinner, hock, claret, or light beer are drunk as a rule; but at breakfast and supper, beer and milk are the usual beverages, the latter appearing in enormous jugs — indeed, we have actually seen a glass one that stood over 2 feet high.
After dinner coffee is immediately served with cream, not hot milk; after supper, tea is generally handed round, the hostess brewing it at the table.
Beside her stands a huge samovar, which is really a Russian urn, and not a teapot as generally supposed. Inside it are hot coals or coke, round the tin of which is the boiling water, while above it stands the teapot, kept hot by the water below. It is generally very good tea, for it comes over from China in blocks through Siberia, but it is much better when drunk with thin slices of lemon than with milk. As a rule, it is served to men in tumblers, and to women in cups, an etiquette with an unknown origin. It is pale-straw colour, and looks horribly weak, and so it is, but with lemon it forms a very refreshing beverage.
At the end of each meal every one at the table goes and shakes hands with the host and hostess and says ''tack'' (thank you); certainly a pretty little courtesy on the part of strangers, but rather monotonous from children, when there are many of them, as there often are in Finland, especially when the little ones cluster round the parents or grandparents as a sort of joke, and prolong the "tack" for an indefinite period.
Then the men smoke; seldom the women, for although so close to Russia Finnish women rarely imitate their neighbours in this habit. The elder men smoke tremendously, especially cigarettes, fifty or sixty per diem being nothing uncommon. In fact, this smoking has become so terrible a curse that there is now a movement among the students, most of whom seem to be anti-smokers, against tobacco, so perhaps the new generation may not have such black teeth and yellow fingers.
Ethel Bielliana Tweedie. Through Finland in Carts. Adam and Charles Black, 1897.
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