Part 4 (1/2)

_Ost omelette_, a delicious sort of custard or omelette, made with cheese and served hot, although everything else on the side-table is cold.

Mushrooms cooked in cream is another favourite dish.

Then small gla.s.s plates with slices of cold eel in jelly, salmon in jelly, tongue, ham, potted meat, etc., complete the _Smorgsbord_, which is often composed of fifteen or twenty dishes.

These delicacies are many of them delicious, but as the same things appear at each meal three times a day, one gets heartily sick of them in the end, and, to an English mind, they certainly seem out of place at breakfast time.

There are many excellent breads in Finland--

_Frankt brod_ is really French bread; but anything white is called _Frankt brod_, and very good it is, as a rule.

_Rg brod_, or rye bread, is the ordinary black bread of the country, made in large flat loaves.

_Hlkaka_, the peasants' only food in some parts, is baked two or three times a year, so they put the bread away in a loft or upon the kitchen rafters; consequently, by the time the next baking day comes round it is as hard as a brick. A knife often cannot cut it. It is invariably sour, some of the last mixing being always left in the tub or bucket, that the necessary acidity may be ensured.

_Knackebrod_ is a thin kind of cake, made of rye and corn together, something like Scotch oatcake, with a hole in the middle, so that it may be strung up in rows like onions on a stick in the kitchen. When thin and fresh it is excellent, but when thick and stale a dog biscuit would be equally palatable.

_Wiborgs kringla_, called in Finnish _Wiipurin rinkeli_, is a great speciality, its real home and origin being _Wiborg_ itself. It is a sort of cake, but its peculiarity is that it is baked on straw, some of the straw always adhering to the bottom. It is made in the form of a true lover's knot, of the less fantastic kind, and a golden sign of this shape hangs outside to determine a baker's shop; even in Petersburg and in the north of Finland a modified representation of the _Wiborgs kringla_ also denotes a bakery.

Having partaken of the odds and ends mentioned, the ordinary mid-day meal or dinner begins, usually between two and four o'clock.

The hostess, who sits at the head of the table, with her husband generally on one side and her most honoured guest on the other, with two huge soup-tureens before her, asks those present whether they will have soup or _filbunke_, a very favourite summer dish. This is made from fresh milk which has stood in a tureen till it turns sour and forms a sort of curds, when it is eaten with sugar and powdered ginger. It appears at every meal in the summer, and is excellent on a hot day. It must be made of fresh milk left twenty-four hours in a warm kitchen for the cream to rise, and twenty-four hours in the cellar, free from draught, to cool afterwards. The castor sugar is invariably served in a tall silver basin--that is to say, the bowl, with its two elegant handles, stands on a well-modelled pillar about eight or ten inches high, altogether a very superior and majestic form of sugar basin.

There are two special drinks in Finland--one for the rich, the other for the poor.

_Mjod_ is one of the most delicious beverages imaginable. It is not champagne, and not cider, but a sort of effervescing drink of pale yellow colour made at the breweries, and extremely refres.h.i.+ng on a hot day. It costs about one s.h.i.+lling and sixpence a bottle, sometimes more, and is often handed round during an afternoon call with the coffee and _marmelader_, the famous Russian sweetmeats made of candied fruits.

The other drink is called in Swedish _Svagdricka_, but as it is really a peasant drink, and as the peasants speak Finnish, it is generally known as _Kalja_, p.r.o.nounced ”Kal-e-yah.” It looks black, and is really small beer. Very small indeed it is, too, with a nasty burnt taste, and the natives up-country all make it for themselves, each farm having half a dozen or twenty hop poles of its own, which flavours the _Kalja_ for the whole party for a year, so its strength of hop or amount of bubble is not very great.

From the middle of June till the middle of July we ate wild strawberries three times a day with sugar and cream! They simply abound, and very delicious these little _Mansikka_ are. So plentiful are they that _Suomi_ is actually known as ”strawberry land.”

There are numbers of wild berries in Finland; indeed, they are quite a speciality, and greet the traveller daily in soup--sweet soups being very general--or they are made into delicious syrups, are served as compote with meat, or transformed into puddings.

Here are a few of them--

Finnish. Latin.

_Mansikka_ _Fragaria vesca_ Wild strawberries, found in profusion everywhere.

_Mesikka_ _Rubus arcticus_ Red, with splendid aroma.

Liqueur is made from them.

_Vaatukka_ _Rubus idaeus_ Wild raspberry.

_Lakka_ _Rubus chamaemorus_ Black. Often made into a kind of black juice, and taken as sweet soup.

_Mustikka_ _Vaccinium myrtillus_ (Wortleberries)--Black.

Often made into soup of a glorious colour.

_Puolukka_ _Vaccinium vitis idaea_ (Red whortleberry)--Like a small cranberry. Eaten with meat.