Brown food is good food - a week with 1890's lunches

The last week I was home in isolation due to coming down with some cold symptoms (I feel fine now). Since I was working from home I decided to take the time to actually try out some food that was eaten in the period 1895-1906 in Falun, since the museum where I'm working are aiming to build up a living history part dedicated to that time period. Most of the food is very hearthy and simple with few ingredients.  Since I'm not doing hard manual labour for me it was definitely enough to have lunch, and then just a very light dinner because I was still full from the lunch. Also my dinners were almost all vegetarian, since the lunches were severly lacking in vegetables and it feelt good to eat something that wasn't just different shades of brown and beige.

The recipes are with one exception taken from the book Dalmål - från barkbröd till björnstek, by Kerstin Ankert et al., but I have modified them to be more suited for one person, and for a modern stove.

Sluring  - a recipe after Anna Johansson, wife of a brewery worker,  in Falun 1906.

Served with some crispbread and pickled greens

2-3 slices of thick bacon
200 ml milk
150 ml wheat flour

Fry the bacon in a pan and remove it but keep the fat in the pan. Mix the milk and flour into a batter and pour it in the pan. Let it simmer for 20 minutes and stir from time to time until it turns lightly yellow. Eat with the bacon.

This tasted as expected, and I like bacon so it was good.

Korngrynskaka or barley pudding - a recipe after the worker Axel Petterson in Fredshammar 1897

I forgot to take a photo of this dish

100 ml dried barley
1 small onion
1tblsp golden syrup (ljus sirap)
30 g butter/margarine/fat
300 ml milk
salt

Grease a baking dish and pour the barley into it. Chop and fry the onion in the fat until golden. Mix it with the barley and add the syrup and some salt. Pour the milk over it and put it in the oven at 175 degrees Celsius for 45-50 minutes, or until the barley has soaked up all the milk and is soft.
I don't like fried onions in gratins, some of my least favorite dishes in the traditional Swedish kitchen have golden syrup added to them so I was really sceptical, but it tasted surprisingly good.

Kolbotten with sauce

Kolbotten - recipe after Lena Johansson, a miner's wife, in Falun,1906
3 slices of bacon
150 ml flour
150 ml water
salt

Mix the water and flour and let it rest while you fry the bacon in a pan. Remove the bacon and pour the batter into the pan. Put a lid over the batter and let it fry on a low heat for 15-20 minutes, turning it once to make it even on both sides. The result is a quite thick pancake.

Sauce  - a "common dish for workers in Borlänge at the turn of the century"
25 g of fat (margarine/butter/bacon drippings)
1 tblsp of flour
200 ml water
one small onion
chives
salt

Use the same pan that you used for your bacon and kolbotten. Add in some more fat and let it melt. Whisk in the flour and when you have a thick paste you add the chopped onion and water. Whisk the sauce so that it is smooth and let it simmer on a low heat, be careful so that it doesn't burn, until the onions are soft. Add chives and salt for some extra flavour. The original recipe doesn't have chives, but it's such a common herb in other recipes from the same time so I didn't feel bad for using it.

Eat the kolbotten and bacon with the sauce poured over it. You can also substitute the kolbotten for boiled potatoes.

Klimp with mesost-sauce - recipe after Listen Mårtensson, wife of a painter, in Falun 1906

Klimp is basically the Swedish form of small dumpling, it's a great food because it's very cheap and filling. In Sweden it was common to cook the klimp in soup or stews and use them instead of potatoes or bread.

Klimp
50 g flour
30 ml milk
pinch of salt

Whisk the flour, salt and milk into a smooth batter. Boil up a generous amount of water, with salt in it. Take a spoonful of the batter at the time and drop it into the boiling water. The klimp rises to the surface when it's cooked through. It has a tendency to stick to the bottom so it might be good to use the spoon and make sure they can rise up.

Mesost-sauce
Mesost or in Norwegian brunost is a cheese made from the whey, and usually contains some amount of goats milk. It has a sweet taste that is a bit toffeelike. I really don't like mesost, so I used messmör (mes-butter) which is a softer, more mellow spread also made from whey but without any goat's milk.

1 tblsp fat (margarine or butter)
1 tbslp flour
200 ml milk
1 tblsp mesost or messmör

Make a roux from the fat and flour and whisk in the milk. When yout have the consistensy that you like add the mesost and stir it in until it as melted into the sauce.

This was sooooo good, and definitely my favorite dish of the week. I added some chives to the serving.

And finally something sweet to go with all the savory dishes

Bärkaka or berry cake - from a description Selma Ström's Hemma på Elsborg, a book about growing up in Falun around the year 1900.

Spisbröd

25 g margarine or butter
400 ml flour
1 tsp baking powder
0,5 tsp salt
200 ml sourmilk (filmjölk)

100 g frozen berries (or fresh if you have them, should be lingonberries but I used a mix of currants and strawberries)
golden syrup (ljus sirap)

Melt the margarine/butter and let it cool. Mix the flour, salt and baking powder. Add the fat and the sourmilk. Take up the dough and use a rolling pin to make really flat round cakes and prick them with a fork. Fry the cakes in a dry and hot pan, around 2 minutes on each side. When they are finished place them under a towel to keep them warm.

Heat the fruit until it's soft and mash it with a fork. Take a cake and spread a generous layer of the berry mash on it and sprinkle some golden syrup over it