July 1, 2025 – Ann is in OurLittleCorner today

Gimme Some Spice!

We just hosted a group of Sonoma friends at a Swedish “Midsomer” smorgasbord.

All of our guests were assigned a Swedish recipe to make, which I got to choose based upon the fact that I had the 2nd most Swedish blood of anyone coming to the party. After a good amount of time spent Googling, I came up with the menu, which included all kinds of pickled herring, Swedish cheeses and crackers and rye bread, a sandwich cake (smörgåstårta), meatballs (not from Ikea), Jansson’s Temptation (a potato and sprats casserole), pickled vegetable salads (aka “week salads” since they last a week in the fridge…nothing to laugh at!), a strawberry cream cake, and oatmeal cookies.

Reviewing the recipes I’d chosen made me suddenly aware of how few spices and flavorings were used. If you’re reading between the lines…yes, I found the Swedish recipes rather bland, except for the heavy doses of vinegar that appeared here and there.

My torn and tattered 1965 The Scandinavian Cookbook has a recipe for Swedish meatballs with teeny amounts of pepper, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and…MSG! And that recipe is about the spiciest thing I can find, except for recipes with vinegar and mustard. There’s no garlic, no cumin, no paprika, no coriander, no red chili flakes…all of those spices I consider almost essential to good food.

I think the relative blandness of traditional Scandinavian recipes may be attributed to two factors: immigration numbers and the Spice Routes. My Swedish grandparents emigrated around 1900 and Sweden’s population at that time was 0.7% foreign-born (note: that’s 7/10 of 1 percent!). By 2020, according to Wikipedia, that number had risen to 20%, with the largest numbers arriving from mostly spicy-food countries – Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Iraq, Poland, India, Iran, Thailand, and China. (It’s interesting to compare that to the the U.S. foreign-born population which today is around 14%.)

And then there are the Spice Routes. The BBC has a fascinating website about spices, their trade, and the impact that had on our world, beginning with the medieval period. The article states that “while spices had been consumed in Asia for most likely as long as there had been people living there, in Europe they became a new symbol of high social status.” 

The trading map of the Dutch East India Trading Company, established in 1602, shows that the early trade of spices from the East to the West didn’t make it to Sweden.

A ship which capsized in 1495 and was excavated in 2021 also provides insight into what spices were both available – at least to kings – AND considered valuable around that time in Scandinavia. That capsized Danish warship was named the Gribshunden (which translates to Griffin Hound). King Hans of Norway and Denmark was on his way to Sweden with an entourage of 150 men on his ship – and about 15 more ships and soldiers, hoping to convince the Swedish Council that he should also be King of Sweden. Though Hans was not on the ship when it burned and sank, it pretty much ruined that year’s kingly effort. But 2 years later, on the battlefield at Rotebro, Sweden, his troops overpowered the Swedes, and Hans returned as king of Sweden— as well as Norway and Denmark (the Scandinavian empire called the “Kalmar Union”).

Because Hans wanted to display his great wealth and status to the Swedes, his ship in 1495 was loaded with extravagant items. According to this paper, published on The National Library of Medicine website, the excavation of the ship in 2021 “revealed a diverse assemblage of plant materials, including exotic flavorings with no Nordic-region archaeological precedent: saffron, cloves, and ginger. The same context produced peppercorns, mustard, caraway, dill, raspberry and blackberry, cucumber, grape, almonds, and hazelnuts. Preservation of these organic remains is due to the Baltic Sea’s exceptional environmental conditions.“

It just so happened that our Swedish dinner had recipes which emphasized ginger, peppercorns, mustard, caraway, dill, cucumber, and grapes (well, dried grapes, aka raisins)! Our Swedish recipe for today, which was included in our smorgasbord, also has dried grapes. And this same recipe – following tradition – is spiceless. But the resulting oatmeal cookies are still delicious.

And because Andy is blogging today about how women like men who have a sense of humor, I have to close my blog with this pun, hopefully encouraging some men to be attracted to MY sense of humor! :).

Did you know ginger is an ancient spice?

Its roots go way back.

HA!

Here’s a gingery Swedish cookie recipe – and below is our favorite Swedish cookie recipe – with no ginger. Yet we still love it!