[Sca-cooks] 'Viking' recipes
Terry Decker
t.d.decker at att.net
Mon Feb 11 14:57:35 PST 2013
Here's part of a post by Nanna Ragnvaldardottir, the Icelandic culinary
author, from about 15 years ago. The "malvasir" mentioned is probably
Malvasia wine. Bear
In a book on Norwegian food history (mostly post-1500) by Fredrik Grøn that
I have here it says that "The first Nordic writer to mention the baking of
flat breads and even has an illustration of them in his work is the Swedish
archbishop Olaus Magnus, around 1550. He is the first to tell the often
repeated tales about flatbread that keeps so long that it can be baked at
the birth of a child and served at its engagement party. He also says that
women in Norway "at the ocean coast", but also women in many Swedish
communities, will come together on bright spring days to help each other
with the baking. That was a group activity. They use "thin metal plates", he
says, no longer flat stones. The dough is made of flour, beans and peas, and
this is also correct for Norway. Then he describes how the flatbread is kept
in high piles, and says it will keep for 16-20 years. Olaus Magnus doesn´t
use the term "flatbrød". He also mentions other types of bread baked in
Sweden, "julebröd" (Christmas bread), "krydred bröd" (spiced bread), bread
that will go stone hard in the air, "skorpor" and lastly "a fine bread for
delicate Nordic gentlewomen". The dough for that consists of wheat flour,
eggs and sugar, with added rose water and "malvasir" (don´t know what that
is)."
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