Finnish cuisine

The ingredients are kept rather simple, even for a holiday roast (here moose)

Karelian pie with rice pudding filling

Roast moose

Foretaste

The Finnish cuisine is the national cuisine of Finland and - due to the relatively young independent history of the country - strongly influenced by the Swedish and Russian cuisine . It is essentially based on potatoes and bread with fish and different types of meat. Different types of meat or meat and fish are often used together. The Finnish recipes are kept simple, few spices are used, often only salt. An exception is allspice , which is used more often than in other national kitchens:

“Finnish cuisine is called masculine, bitter. Primitive in the best sense of the word. The Finns love the unadulterated basic taste of a dish. The lamb must taste like lamb, the sliced ​​reindeer like Lapland. [...] A little salt is enough spice. [...] But the Finns also need their exceptions: mouse pippuri, allspice, a clove pepper. You can find this spice in almost every Finnish dish, even in the spice cake "

- Hannelore Hellquist, Helvi Wendeler : Finnish cooking, roasting and baking, everyday Finnish life in the kitchen , J. Latka Verlag Bonn 1986, ISBN 3925068031 , page 5

Finland has long been a poor country, the spices were expensive and therefore hardly available. Although Finland is one of the countries richest in mushrooms, it was the Karelians who first introduced the Finns to eating the mushrooms. A specialty of Finnish cuisine are the cloudberries , which only exist as a wild plant and are not used in any other national cuisine. While cereal dishes and bread recipes often come from Russia, the pea soup traditionally served on Thursdays and many of the fish dishes were imported from Sweden. However, unlike in Sweden, the smoked salmon is served warm.

Food

Summer soup

Mammi with sugar and cream

• Karelian pierogi (karjalanpiirakka) , a small pastry made from rice pudding or mashed potatoes wrapped in rye dough, is traditionally eaten with egg butter, but also with sausage, cheese, etc. It is used as a type of bread.
• Moose and reindeer in different designs
• Karelian mess , a pot of 3-4 kinds of meat cooked for a very long time
• Smoked salmon (savulohi) , unlike its Swedish counterpart, is served warm.
• Pre-taste , a mixture of meat and fish, cooked or fried as small meatballs or as a mixture with vegetables similar to Labskaus; the favorite dish of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
• Bread cheese ( leipäjuusto ) , a baked very flat cheese, is best served with cloudberry jam.
• Pea soup with pancakes ( hernekeitto ja pannukakku ), a typical Thursday meal , the pancake served with strawberry jam ( mansikkahillo )
• Salmon soup ( Lohikeitto ) based on a vegetable broth, with salmon fillet and potato pieces as well as milk, cream, butter and dill
• Summer soup ( Kesäkeitto ), popular, classic soup made from summer vegetables (sugar peas, spinach, carrots, beans, cauliflower, potatoes, radishes with meat broth, milk, egg yolks, lemon juice, butter, cream, sugar, salt, pepper, parsley, dill and crabs ). Recipes vary.
• Various reindeer dishes (poro) , not an everyday meal for Finns, are, however, eaten by tourists and in the cold north.
• Various berries in summer, including cloudberries (lakka) .
• Liquorice (lakritsi) , especially the strong, salty type salmiakki , which gets its unique taste from ammonium chloride.
• Mämmi traditional baked malt pudding
• Finnish cakes of all kinds are often eaten with coffee. They are often moist and soft. Classically, they are not precut. With coffee, everyone can cut out a piece as they wish. The birthday cakes are typical. They have a three-part batter with a berry filling between each layer. A cream, chocolate or some kind of syrup is given around the outside.
• Runeberg tartlets A traditional classic.
• Pulla yeast dough pastries . This is usually eaten with coffee, either small balls or a yeast plait. It used to be a tradition to eat pulla first, then cookies and cakes.
• Viili Finnish solid sour milk.

Kalakukko

There are also various regional specialties, most notably the fish cock ( Kalakukko ) from Eastern Finland, where most of the typical Finnish dishes come from, and the blood sausage ( mustamakkara ) from Tampere . At Easter time, mämmi is made, a traditional pudding made from rye malt.

Finns only eat out on certain occasions, and the restaurant prices are correspondingly high. An exception is lunchtime when, thanks to a coupon system set up by the government, restaurants in the cities offer food for around € 7, usually consisting of a main course, salad table, bread table and a drink. University canteens, many of which are open to the public, are cheap at € 2 to € 3, especially for students, although you usually have to pay a little more without a student ID.

Sausages, hamburgers or other take-away foods are offered at many grill stands - often until late at night. The Finnish counterpart to McDonald’s is a Hesburger with a similar menu.

In Helsinki and elsewhere there are snack stalls (Nakki kioski) that only open in the evening and offer a variety of fast food such as macaroni aperunat .

At Christmas, the traditional holiday menu consists of mildly cured, oven-baked Christmas ham (Joulukinkku), various casseroles, such as (sweet) mashed potatoes, carrot and liver casserole, and beetroot salad ( Rosolli ).

beverages

• kahvi ja munkki You can find this sign at every café and petrol station. It refers to a small snack between meals, consisting of a cup of coffee with a yeast dough that has been fried and rolled in sugar.
• Sima Traditional drink for May 1st ( Vappu ). It consists of water, brown and white sugar, possibly beet syrup, lemon and yeast; Fermentation control with raisins. The alcohol content is very low.
• Home beer (kotikalja) This traditional drink should not be missing at any big festival. It is a mixture of water, malt, sugar and yeast. The alcohol content is very low with an average of 0.5 - 1% alcohol.

The Finns have a reputation as the world's greatest coffee drinkers (kahvi) ; they drink an average of five cups a day, mostly with sugar and milk. Every now and then you will be asked whether you would like to have "real cream" ( oikea kerma ) in your coffee instead of the cream ( kerma ) . However, this is by no means a dairy product, but rather a code name for high-proof.

Alcohol is relatively expensive, although the increased competition resulting from Estonia 's accession to the EU in 2004 led to a 33% reduction in spirits tax. A bottle of beer in a bar or pub still costs around € 5, in a supermarket € 1.20. While beer or cider ( siideri ) is available in every supermarket, wines and hard liquor are only available in state-owned alcoholic stores. The age limit for buying alcohol is 18 years, and for hard liquor 20 years. Young looking customers usually need to be able to identify themselves. Beer comes in three strength classes: I is very weak and intended for young people, III roughly corresponds to German beer and IV is relatively strong (class II is completely unknown in practice).

In Finland the so-called Salmiakki is widespread and something like the national schnapps . The deep black spirit has between 30 and 40% alcohol by volume and tastes intensely of liquorice. On the occasion of the Olympic Games in 1952, a long drink called Lonkero was developed from a mixture of gin and grapefruit lemonade , thanks to its popularity it is still produced today.

The Finns also like to make their own alcoholic drinks: Kotikalja (house beer) consists of a fermented mixture of grain, yeast, water and a little lemon juice and is very refreshing. Some also operate stills hidden in the forest, the high- proof product is called Pontikka .

Varia

In the past it was customary to say thank you to the housewife or hostess after the meal when leaving the table with a generally spoken kiitos (thank you) or kiitos ruoasta (thank you for the meal). Even today it is considered polite and is part of "good manners " in Finland.

literature

• Hannelore Hellquist, Helvi Wendeler: Finnish cooking, roasting and baking, everyday Finnish life in the kitchen. J. Latka Verlag, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-925068-03-1
• Markus Maulavirta : Avotulilla: Ruokaa Luonnon Antimista. (German: Over an open fire: Food from nature. ) WSOY 2015, ISBN 978-951-041226-8
• Eeva Strehmel: Traditional Finnish house dishes. Traute Warnke Verlag, Reinbek, 3rd edition 1994, ISBN 978-3-9801591-8-0
• Rolf Wendeler, Hannelore Hellqvist, Helvi Wendeler: Finnish cuisine for festivals and holidays: Cooking and customs throughout the year. J. Latka Verlag, Bonn 1985, ISBN 3-925068-01-5

Web links

Commons : Finnish Cuisine  - Collection of Images

Footnotes

1. ^ Simone Filipowski: Scandinavian cuisine. NGV- Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-625-18095-1 , page 18
2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ [1] Recipes (Finnish)
4. ^ Simone Filipowski: Scandinavian cuisine. NGV- Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-625-18095-1 , page 19
5. ↑ [2] Coffee consumption: "... the Finns have the highest coffee consumption in the world. ... around 11.5 kilos per capita, which corresponds to more than 1300 cups of coffee per capita annually."
6. ↑ http://www.meinfinnlandtagebuch.de.tl/Kultur-und-Tipps.htm