Finnish cuisine
Finnish cuisine is a mixture between
Traditional Finnish foods and drinks
Here are some of the Finnish culinary traditions and peculiarities I have come across this far. Some foods are quite delicious but others are just a bit odd.
Graavilohi
Raw salmon cured with some dill, salt, sugar and white pepper. Served as a cold cut.
Raw whitefish cured with some dill, salt, sugar and white pepper. Served as a cold cut.
Sour crackers. Very thin sourdough crackers.
Bread made of mostly rye sourdough, normally without the use of yeast. Hence their usual flat form.
Imelletty perunalaatikko sweetened potato-box.
Mashed and sweetened potatoes baked in a dish in the oven. Sometimes served together with Carelian-roast but is nowadays considered as traditional Christmas-food.
Creamy shredded potatoes with anchovies baked in the oven. Very nice food served late at night as snack at parties.
Traditional pastries with plum-jam in the shape of a four-pointed star, eaten in the Christmas-time. Goes nicely with coffee.
Fried minced meat and cooked rice rolled into cabbage-leaves. Fried either on a frying-pan or in the oven. Served with cowberry jam. Similar to the Greek Dolmades that are wrapped into vine-leaves.
Soup made of vegetables like cabbage, onions, and carrots with a beef broth and chunks of beef in it. Very nice on cold winter nights with a slice of sourdough bread.
Casserole made of cabbage, fried minced meat and cooked rice baked in the oven, usually served with jam of cowberries. This is a complete meal and needs nothing else to go with it.
Tradionally from the city of
Traditionally from Carelia, the eastern parts of
Tradionally from Carelia, the eastern parts of
Kinuski-kastike
A kind Toffee like dessert-sauce made of double cream and sugar cooked until thick and brown. Delicious together with ice-cream.
Kulibiak Inbaked salmon
Salmon, cooked rice and eggs with dill wrapped in pastry baked in the oven. Served with a mix of beef bouillon and melted butter poured over it. This is a dish from the eastern part of
Lakka or Hilla Cloudberries
Orange coloured raspberry shaped berries growing on marshlands and swamps. Eaten either fresh as they are with a sprinkle of sugar on top, made into jam or eaten frozen with Kinuski-kastike and ice-cream.
Lanttulaatikko Turnip-box.
Casserole of mashed, cooked turnips or rutabagas with another word, baked in the oven, hence the name “box” as they were from the beginning baked in the oven in “boxes” of birch-bark. Sometimes served with the Carelian-roast but nowadays considered as traditional Christmas-food.
Slices of side of pork, fried made in a sauce and served together with either boiled or mashed potatoes.
This is a dessert, nothing you put on your bread. Eaten either warm or cold and served with cloudberry-jam.
Minced meat rolled into balls and fried in the pan, served in a brown sauce most commonly with either boiled or mashed potatoes.
Soup made on salmon, potatoes, onions and carrots. Usually you start off the soup by frying some sourdough bread in butter before you add some fish-stock and the other ingredients with the salmon last. Lots of cut dill in the soup and rounded off with real cream, very nice.
Slices of potatoes in layers with fried thin slices of beef, cooked in beer in a dish in the oven. This I suspect is a dish of Swedish origin.
The fish used are usually so small so they are left with their heads and intestines whole, rolled in bread-crumbs and fried in butter. The tinier fish, the better taste, I think. The orange roe of the fish in considered to be second after genuine Caviar.
Raw, salted roe of the Muikku-fish, served with sour cream and diced onion on toast.
Boiled egg and cooked rice wrapped in pastry. Served as a snack or to go with soup.
Musta makkara “Black sausage”
Traditionally from the city of
Mustikka Blueberries or bilberries
Blueberries are often eaten fresh with sprinkled sugar and some milk in the summer, made into jam or eaten in pies.
Mämmi
An Easter delicacy made of rye malt and molasses, and looks like some black dog-do. It is quite tasty event though the looks of it is not very appetizing. The Mämmi is traditionally served with sugar and cream and eaten as a dessert at Easter.
Hard, dried “cracker-bread”. Keeps well for months and months stored dry and out of light.
Traditional Russian Easter delicacy made of quark, butter, sugar, lemon-peel, dried fruits and nuts. Served in many homes at Easter.
Casserole quite like the British Shepherd’s Pie, mashed potatoes and fried onions and minced meat in layers baked in a dish in the oven.
Soup made of spinach spiced with nutmeg and served with halves of boiled eggs in it.
Porkkanalaatikko Carrot-box.
Casserole made of mashed, cooked carrots and cooked rice baked in the oven, hence the name “box” as they were from the beginning baked in the oven in “boxes” of birch-bark. Sometimes served with the Carelian-roast but nowadays considered as traditional Christmas-food.
Pulla Bun
This is what you normally do with the rests that have added up during the week, sometimes called an airplane accident as everything is mixed in it. Consists usually of fried meat, onions and potatoes that is diced and fried. At home anything goes, sausages, meatballs, ham, bacon together with the potatoes. If you are pretentious you make it of potatoes, onions and steak of beef. Pyttipannu is served with beetroot and fried eggs. It is also sometimes served with just the egg-whites fried and the yolk raw to be poured over the hot Pyttipannu.
Crayfish-parties are traditionally held in the month of August when the crayfish-fishing season is. Cooked with dill, peeled by hand when eating on toast with dill as they are with snapsi, a shot of either Aquavit or Vodka.
Cold cooked carrots, pickled beetroot, pickled cucumber, onions all diced in equal size, either all mixed together or served to be mixed at the meal served with whipped cream. Considered as a must by many Finns as traditional Christmas-food.
Wild forest-mushrooms, onions and whipped cream. Sometimes served with sourdough-bread or on top of Carelian Pies.
Silli you get in many ways and different flavours but as a general they are raw herrings cured in vinegar with spices.
Sima Mead
Preferably homemade, freshly sparkling drink with a very low amount of alcohol. Consisting of brown sugar, slices of lemon and raisins are fermented over night and left to mature until when the raisins float to top in the bottles. To be drunk chilled and fresh, does not keep for long if homemade. Traditionally served at Vappu together with Tippaleipä. You can also buy Sima in the supermarkets.
Tippaleipä Drop-bread
A crunchy delicacy made of a dough similar doughnuts in thin string poured into a bird’s nest like form, cooked crispy in oil, and dusted with confectioner’s sugar. Tippaleipä is traditionally eaten at Vappu when celebrating the arrival of spring. Tippaleipä itself originally came from
Täytekakku “Filled cake”
A sponge cake filled with jam, canned or fresh fruit and berries, depending on the season of course, topped with whipped cream and decorated. Traditionally served as birthday cakes.
Fresh potatoes of the first crop in the summer, cooked with dill. A must as midsummer’s Eve for many Finns.
Traditionally sandwiches have been “open” and decorated with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber but nowadays more and more commonly the sandwiches are becoming more and more cosmopolitan instead of the old traditional Finnish open sandwiches.
A salty “cake” consisting of layers of sandwiches with a surface of mayonnaise and decorated with cold cuts. Usually you have a sandwich-cake that is either with fish or meat. Nowadays it is also necessary to take vegetarians into consideration as well.
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