What to serve with Swedish potato sausage?

Cafe Society
21

Lefse - a flat potato (or not) Scandinavian bread. Looks like a flour tortilla. Butter it, sprinkle with brown or white sugar and a little cinnamon and roll it. Or mix soft butter with almond extract and white sugar to spread.

It’s difficult to get really good lefse anymore. What I find in stores is often thick as shingles. It’s best nice and thin. And all the church basement ladies are so busy these days they resort to using powdered milk and potato flakes. Ugh. I call it “concentration camp” lefse because it’s something you’d feed to people you didn’t care very much for.

If you are fortunate to have a few little old lady friends who still have the heavy old lefse irons and the patience and muscle to roll thin, the generosity to use real potatoes and cream, then you have a friend indeed. Bless them for they are leaving us (soon lefseless) daily.

Red cabbage and rutabaga are traditional. We mash the rutabaga with butter, salt and pepper. Boiled potatoes with a sprinkle of dill.

22

Forgot the cookies. Spritz, sandbakkelsa, rosettes, krumkaka, kringla, kringler - a stark white cooky platter that looks like what the landscape must have by the North Sea at Yule.

If you imbibe. You could serve glogg, a mulled wine.

Now if only people still went Julebukking. You think if I brought a plate of lefse I could get in on a Posadas somewhere? Oh yeah, I know it would be a little more sedate but it’s certainly nice to see people carrying on their traditions.

23

I remember and loved that show - but ever since I tasted that Fish Jello the Norwegians make, I have not trusted Scandinavian cuisine…

24

As I recall from my days of learning Swedish from native speakers, Gubbe means simply “Old man,” as in, “I say, old man, have you any more of that simply scrumptious lutefisk?” The gamla is interesting, as it would imply he is an old old man, which certainly does sound pejorative to my ears.

I remember the song Gubben Noak, in which Old Man Noah was a man of good standing (though this was admittedly many, many years ago).

25

Gubbe has a slightly negative connotation. I would never understand gamla gubbe as dirty old man though.

Pwmeek what you call Julen gröt should be julgröt. I always called it risgrynsgröt

I have never heard of swedish potatoe sausage.

26

(Having read the Wiki article) Ah, right. I forgot about hiding a single almond in the julgröt. Finding it in your bowl is supposed to confer good luck for the following year (or sometimes indicate the next to be married).

(Julen gröt was a suggestion from google-translate)

27

Make that knäckebröd and Slottssenap. Slottssenap could be translated as castle mustard, but it’s just a trade name and I notice that Unilever, who owns it, call it Slotts senap, which would be Slott’s mustard in English.

As for lefse, it’s a Norwegian thing, not Swedish.

28

Well, Swedish pancakes are not crepes, but the are served as such here, and they do resemble crepes more than “American Pancakes,” so when trying to describe them, the path of least resistance is “crepes” to let the conversation move forward.

Potatiskorv (Potatoe Sausage) is not as unknown as people try to imply. However, it is more of a dish on the Swedish X-mas table (a version of a smorgasbord or buffe) these days. Another trend is of course that the Swedes, like any other people in the western hemisphere, are working more and eating out in greater scale, and in the restaurants or fast food joint (McD’s BK, Subway, etc), you will be hard pressed to find anything but traditional fast food.

With that being said, I’m not sure how a Swede living in Sweden doesn’t know what potatiskorv IS. It would be like saying that one doesn’t know or have heard of chicken and dumplings, red beans and rice, black eye peas, or grits for an American. It’s not something I eat, even rarely because of choice, nor is it served in the area I live in any larger capacity, but I certainly know what it is and how to get a hold of it if I wanted to.

To answer the original question.
Potatoe Sausage can be served with boiled or mashed potatoes. Sauerkraut or pickled red cabbage is also associated with this type of sausage. If you choose to give a quick browning, for texture and taste, after you’ve boiled it, you can dice up some cold, boiled potatoes and fry that up (like home made hash). Swedes also used to like their “brown beans” (beans that had been soaked and then boiled with a little bit of syrup, vinegar, and a few other spices). I would also venture to guess that those worried about carbs could steam some cauliflower, broccoli, green peas, and add a few pickled red beats (or red cabbage) on the side for color. However, the most frequent sightings of potatoe sausage these days is as a part of the Swedish “Julbord,” and at that point, the sausages are just served by themselves in on a serving tray for people to pick if they want.

As with most Swedish food (Husmanskost), you’re not going to go wrong with a slightly chilled beer (in this case I would recommend a lighter beer), milk, or water. Because of the possible inclusion of pickled veggies, I would stay away from sweet drinks, such as soda pops, as the contrast would be a bit much.

All this IMHO, of course! :wink:

29

You have never heard of “Potatiskorv”? :confused:

Potatiskorv - Wikipedia

30

I’ll bet Dan Quayle has. :stuck_out_tongue:

31

The last post before yours were six years ago, so you might not get much of a response. And you could note that the English wikipedia article you link to has this line: “In most parts of Sweden, the word “potatiskorv” is unknown” and that the Swedish language article is titled Värmlandskorv and only includes “potatiskorv” as a dialect word in Värmland and a word known to Swedish-Americans.