Food Heritage Analysis
For my food heritage project I chose cardamom bread for the recipe I was going to research. This recipe was brought over from Norway by my great- great grandma in 1893 and has been passed down to the females of the Storlie family ever since. I was interested in researching this recipe because my aunt won the Betty Crocker Bake Off in Indianapolis with it in 1960 and she won the opportunity to study at the U of M where she eventually finished out her entire career. So it is quite a significant dish in my family.
In Scandinavian cultures, Christmas is a popular food season, perhaps the most significant food season in Scandinavian culture. It’s the time of year where people whip up their best dishes to share with family and friends. Traditionally, “The Christmas season is characterized by two kinds of food: meat and sweet breads and cakes.”[1] Cardamom bread is a dish that is mostly served during holiday seasons, so this statement reigns true for many people including my family. Cardamom bread is a relatively dense bread with candied fruit scattered throughout. Cardamom is a spice similar to cinnamon that many people enjoy and feel embodies the holiday season.
I began my research by looking into popular Scandinavian ingredients and dishes. I interviewed my grandma who has been preparing cardamom bread for many years. I ask her if cardamom bread was a popular Norwegian dish. Her response was that at one point it was, but she believes it is becoming less popular as it takes a long time to bake and certain ingredients are not readily available. She also discussed how many people think its dessert bread but in actuality it is served with the main meal. I found that breads and bakery items are popular in Scandinavian cultures and “traditional spices for baking are first of all cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and cardamom. .. Many of these ingredients are only available dried and ground into powder.”[2]
I was also interested in knowing whether or not cardamom bread was a popular dish in Scandinavian cultures. My grandmother described that cardamom bread is a very popular dish around the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, she believes it is becoming less popular because it takes a long time to prepare and some ingredients are hard to work with. According to my grandmother:
“Cardamom is a difficult ingredient to work with. It’s very expensive, and the seeds have to be, they’re green when you buy them and you have to roast them brown and then, in the olden days they use to just take a rolling pin and smash them between to pieces of wax paper. But when I make it I found that if you use the coffee grinder, you can roast the seeds and grind them in the coffee grinder and it makes a very good consistency to put into the cardamom bread.”[3] – Joyce Storlie
This process may not be attractive for people wanting to tackle this recipe. However, often time’s cardamom is available ground at local health food stores and occasionally in the spice section of grocery stores.
As I continued my research on cardamom bread, I noticed that it is categorized as a predominantly Swedish dish. I found this very interesting as my grandmother was full blooded Norwegian. When I interviewed my grandma I asked her about this and she stated that it is in fact a Norwegian dish, but as I continued researching I discovered a possible answer in Henry Notaker’s book, Food Culture in Scandinavia. Notaker describes that, “Many foreign types of bread have become more popular and are imported or baked locally based on foreign recipes. This means that there are certain tendencies toward uniformity in the area as a whole, even if a significant national and even regional difference in bread consumption still exists.” [4] Cardamom bread truly is a Scandinavian bread not predominantly Swedish or Norwegian.
[1] Henry Notaker. (Greenwood Press, 2009). Food culture in Scandinavia, Page 151
[2] Henry Notaker. (Greenwood Press, 2009). Food culture in Scandinavia, Page 74
[3] Joyce Storlie, Interview by Jordyn Olson, October 25, 2015.
[4] Henry Notaker. (Greenwood Press, 2009). Food culture in Scandinavia, Page 47