There were so many Norwegian foods I posted about! It wasn’t always that the food was vile (though sometimes it was) or bland or a bit cream-heavy for contemporary American tastes. Sometimes it was just named or described in so unappetizing a fashion it seemed intentional. Here’s…
The Vet’s Nightcap
- 4 slices bread
- 3 tablesp. fat [what kind of fat? Who cares? Fat.]
- 4 thick slices thick home-made liver paste
- 4 slivers aspic
- 4 slices salt meat
Spread fat evenly on bread, cover with liver paste. Garnish with aspic and slices of salt meat. Serves 4.
Liver paste on lard-smeared bread, garnished with salty Jell-O and and brisket or something. All I could think is that this was a hangover cure, if you hated the person with the hangover.
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And then there are the soups. We (meaning Norwegians) can make soup out of anything, if by soup you mean something in a bowl of liquid. Here are four, so very different:
Buttermilk Soup (there will be more on milk soups in a later post….)
- 1 quart buttermilk
- 4 tablespoonfuls sugar
- 2 yolks of egg
- 1/2 pint cream
Stir yolks of egg and sugar together until white, whip up cream and add. Pour cold buttermilk into the cream, and serve. Serves 4.
This is not heated; it’s fluffy, fatty buttermilk in a bowl.
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Dancing Master Soup
- 1 1/2 quarts fruit juice and water
- 1 1/2 tablespoons potato flour
- sugar
- 8 small rusks
Boil fruit juice and water, add a mixture of potato flour stirred in a little colfd water. Bring quickly to a boil, add sugar to taste. Serve cold with small rusks. Serves 4.
I almost could play along until we got to the rusks. You’re making fruit soup for poor people, okay. But I have a hard time imagining drinking cold, slightly thickened fruit juice with the equivalent of stale toast.
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Here’s what rich-people fruit soup looks like:
Rhubarb Soup
- 1/2 cup rhubarb
- 1 cup water
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon potato flour
Clean and cut the rhubarb fine. Bring to a boil in the water. Dissolve potto flour in two teaspoons waterand stir into boiling soup. Bring to a boil again. Add sugar. This recipe serves one person.
Unlike all the other recipes, this is for one person.
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This last one seems like actual rich-people soup. It has eggs and cream and butter and good veal stock — in contrast to bad veal stock, or watery veal stock, or rancid veal stock or something.
Caraway Soup
- 2 tablespoonfuls butter
- 1 1/2 tablespoonfuls flour
- 1 cup finely chopped fresh caraway
- 1 quart good veal stock
- 1 cup coarsely chopped caraway
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 yolk of egg
- 2 tablespoonfuls cream
Melt butter with flour and finely chopped caraway sprouts. Pour over, aloow simmer five minutes. Add salt, then coarsely chopped caraway sprouts. Remove saucepan, whip up eggs and cream and pour into the hot soup. Garnished with poached eggs or slices of hardboiled egg. Serve toasted bread and butter with the soup. This soup is the supreme springtime sup. Serves 4.
