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STOCKHOLM—The Swedish kitchen is more than meatballs and smorgasbord. The third Thursday in August is the official opening day for a controversial delicacy: Fermented herring, known as "surstromming" (sour herring).
The tradition hails from the north of Sweden, and is possibly because pickling in brine was too expensive in historical times, due to the price of salt. In fermenting, just enough salt is added to stop decomposition, but it allows other bacteria to prosper, thus fermenting the fish.
The herring is caught in the spring and then fermented in barrels for one or two months, then put in tin cans, which are prone to bulging conspicuously due to the continued fermentation process. They are then opened—preferably outdoors—when the Swedish summer draws to an end in August.
The words "acquired taste" is seldom more appropriate than in this case, but surprisingly for anyone who has ever had the wind knocked out of them by the overpowering smell of an open container of this herring, the taste is comparatively mild. While many people cannot bring themselves to eat something that stinks that bad, other Swedes are passionate about this, probably the strangest part of our national cuisine.
The connoisseurs are divided when it comes to how to eat it and what drinks to serve with it, but potatoes, onions, a kind of sour cream, and a special Swedish bread are common. And, since it's a traditional seasonal food, dinner parties with focus on the stinky fish are common, often with ample amounts of beer and liquor to wash it down.
Foreigners usually have a hard time understanding this weird dish, and in 2006 several major international airlines banned the bulging, pressurized cans from their planes, fearing that they might explode, something that the producers, most of which are located in the northern part of Sweden, claim is a myth.
