The festive Norwegian specialty, lutefisk, is definitely an acquired taste.
I love a good winter holiday-season food. Park me at a table with potato pancakes with sour cream. Invite me over for a Christmas ham and, yes, I’ll even try a slice of oft-maligned fruitcake. Anything with crushed candy canes, from cookies to hot cocoa to the shards still in the wrapper at the bottom of my purse? I’m in.
Rehydrated white fish soaked in poison? Insert record scratch.
For the uninitiated, lutefisk is said dish and it’s a Christmas staple in Nordic countries. It’s been around since the Middle Ages, somehow not killing people for centuries. For the non-Nordic among us, lutefisk (pronounced “loo-tuh-fisk”) is a white fish, usually cod, which is air dried over the course of weeks and months until it’s hard. It’s then rehydrated with water before being soaked in lye (lutefisk actually translates to “lye fish”), as in, the poisonous main ingredient in oven cleaner. Finally it’s soaked again in cold water for another four to six days, which removes the lye (hopefully!), baked (or sometimes steamed or boiled), and served.
Different countries have different recipes, but the process is essentially the same. Just ask 16th century author Olaus Magnus who described the dish in his “Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus” (History of Northern People) and bragged how it “is highly regarded, even by kings!”
Well, I’m not royalty, but I was traveling in Trondheim, Norway at the start of the holiday season. Trondheim is the third largest city in Norway, and a destination rooted in both history and innovation. It became a pilgrimage site in the 11th century after the death of St. Olav, who is buried beneath the Gothic marvel that is the Nidaros Cathedral. Today, the city is a worthy pilgrimage for art lovers and students, with its newly-opened PoMo Museum and the country’s largest educational institution, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
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The Britannia Hotel, Trondheim’s most luxurious property, happened to be inaugurating the holiday season with a traditional lutefisk feast during my stay. How could I pass up the opportunity to try this Norwegian staple? Hey, I like fish! Poison, less so. But then again, I haven’t really ever tried my food soaked in poison, so who was I to judge?
The line to get into the dining room was long, which was a promising sign. It was a relief, considering earlier in the day I’d mentioned to someone I was going to try lutefisk that night and she looked at me with the kind of pity-filled smile I thought was reserved for people announcing they just booked a Frontier Airlines vacation.
I ordered a beer and shot of Aquavit after being told by a nearby diner that ordering a fish-friendly Chardonnay was entirely unacceptable. A side-cart of sides was delivered to my table before the fish arrived. The cart included traditional lutefisk accompaniments: pureed peas, chopped bacon, boiled potatoes, mustard, honey, crackers, lefse (Norwegian potato bread), and brown cheese (a Norwegian staple called “brunost” which isn’t as much cheese as it is boiled-down whey).
Executive chef Espen Aunaas brought a plate with two giant slabs of white fish to my table. I’d been warned about the smell, which has been described in such appetizing terms as “a smelly sock” and “a fishy aroma with a faint whiff of cleaning chemicals.” I did not pick up notes of feet or disinfectants, though the fishy smell was present. In its defense, it was fish.
As for the taste, people have even stronger opinions. Author Angela Blount wrote in Once Upon an Ever After, “I didn’t actually know what regret tasted like–but I imagined if it did have a flavor, it would be lutefisk.” Which is somehow more generous than Garrison Keillor’s take that “it is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world’s largest chunk of phlegm.”
I’d say it’s not nearly as bad as edible regret or mucus, but I don’t want that to be confused with high praise. I couldn’t finish even half of my serving. Lutefisk is simultaneously fishy and bland, which is not a power combo of flavor profiles. It’s chewy, if not entirely gelatinous, almost like eating an unsweetened gummy shark purchased at whatever candy store Spongebob goes to.
The aftertaste was more problematic. You know how sometimes while eating tuna fish you all of a sudden get that taste that you just downed a dolphin? Well, minus the accompanying guilt, that’s the aftertaste. On the plus side, those sides couldn’t have been better. And beer and Aquavit are supportive partners in minimizing culinary offenses.
It was a relief to hear Chef Aunaas tell me that lutefisk is considered an acquired taste. He grew up in Trondheim but didn’t appreciate the dish until he became a chef. His parents were not fans after “they tried making it once and served it to my sister’s first boyfriend and he got sick,” he told me. “After that they never made it.”
The trick to making it taste good (or, “good”), he said, is the salting. With more salt, the fish is firmer and less like sea jello. Some people like the gelatinous version better, and I’m not sure what to say about them other than they’re monsters who I hope never invite me to dinner. Chef Aunaas was more diplomatic by saying, “I think for the mainstream this is the best way to serve it.”
I downed another shot and drowned the lutefisk in enough peas and mustard to fulfill my journalistic quest, but was relieved to have my plate removed. All around me, fellow lutefisk diners were ordering second and third rounds of fish as if they were protein-hoarding for a long winter.
“We eat a lot,” Chef Aunaas laughed of his countrymen and women. “We like sturdy food. We’re not a delicate people. We’re not like the Italians who can sit around and make pasta for the whole day.”
In the end, I’m happy I tried lutefisk and happier that I don’t have to try it again. But should anyone else want to sample the dish, it’s easy to find this season throughout Scandinavia and Minnesota, which has a large Nordic population. And though I won’t be partaking, I will toast to your tolerant taste buds. As they say in Trondheim, skål!
