Lutefisk. A fish that promises not pleasure but confrontation

Lutefisk is a trial to which most people have not been invited, because most people would rather not know what they are really made of anyway. The world has accustomed us to flavours that are polite, predictable and ready to be liked at once. Everything is to be soft, accessible, aesthetic and preferably supplied with a short set of instructions for delight. Lutefisk rejects that contract. It does not flirt. It does not explain itself. It does not offer its hand. It lies on the table like a relic of an age in which people did not choose between six kinds of pleasure but between survival and surrender. First, cod dried almost to the hardness of wood, then days of soaking, lye, rinsing, cold, patience and a precision bordering on ritual. One mistake and the fish tastes of soap, falls apart or vanishes in the pot, as if it had itself refused to take part in a compromise. This is a cuisine that knows no leniency. It is chemistry in the service of memory. It is a tradition derived not from abundance but from scarcity, from harsh winters and from the stubbornness of people who had no right to be fussy and yet managed to make a symbol out of necessity. Lutefisk irritates because it recalls something the culture of comfort does not want to remember: that distinctiveness is never born of caution. It arises where someone refuses to dilute their own history merely so as not to offend the taste of the majority. The North did not ask the world whether it might smell different, taste different and behave differently at the table. The North simply survived. It forced others to call its stubbornness heritage. Lutefisk became more than a fish. In Scandinavian emigrant communities it was a test of belonging, a political ritual and a public check of loyalty. A candidate could have a programme, money and a smile rehearsed for the camera, but if he grimaced over the plate he gave away more than during the whole campaign. He could not swallow the history of the people he wanted to represent. This is a border that people today avoid. The border between curiosity and cowardice, between one's own judgement and the reflex of the crowd, between experience and a review read before the first bite. Lutefisk does not promise pleasure. It promises confrontation. You will probably hate it. Perhaps you will understand that taste matters less than the pride with which you approach it. You will discover that not everything repellent is worse, and not everything that delights at once is worth remembering. Take up the challenge. Not to prove that you can eat fish soaked in lye. That would be too small. Try it to find out whether you can enter someone else's tradition without demanding that it first become like you. Take the risk. Eat lutefisk. Either you will know the taste of defeat. Or you will discover that the winner does not always choose what is tasty. Sometimes he chooses what others were afraid to try. ## The fish that built a country The raw material is skrei, the migratory Arctic cod caught in winter off the coast of northern Norway, especially around the Lofoten Islands. From the 11th century, wind-dried cod, stockfish, was Norway's most important export, and it is called the fish that built the country. Salt was a luxury then, so fish was preserved with air and frost. Lye then allowed it to be softened quickly and brought back to life. The first written record was left by the Swedish bishop and writer Olaus Magnus in his "History of the Northern Peoples" of 1555. He described how dry stockfish lies for two days in strong lye, then a day in clean water, and served with salted butter is esteemed even by kings. Royal approval has in fact survived to this day, though in a somewhat different tone. The legends are more colourful. According to folk tradition, Vikings raiding a fishing village burned the birch racks with the drying cod. The fish fell into the ashes, rain mixed with them into a natural lye and soaked them for weeks. The hungry villagers, on their return, rinsed the fish, cooked them and discovered that the hard stockfish had turned white and soft. The second version is more ecclesiastical. Before the Reformation, that is before 1536, Catholics ate no meat during the fast before Christmas, and there was no fresh sea fish inland. So dried cod was soaked with ash to be ready in time for Christmas Eve. In both versions the dish was invented by scarcity, not by a cook. ## Chemistry without mercy The whole process takes 12 to 15 days and resembles a chemistry experiment in three acts. First vatning: stockfish as hard as wood is soaked for five or six days in cold water changed daily, at a temperature close to zero. Then luting: two days in lye. Formerly it was lye from birch or beech ash; today it is an aqueous solution of caustic soda or a mixture of soda ash and slaked lime. The proteins partly hydrolyse, the fish swells, becomes gelatinous and translucent, and its pH rises to 11–12. It is probably the most alkaline dish humans eat. Finally avlutning, de-lyeing: another four to six days in cold water, changed at least once a day, because raw lye is caustic. Everything depends on this stage. Mistakes are punished instantly. Too long in the lye or careless rinsing and the proteins lose cohesion, and during cooking the fish literally dissolves, leaving a cloudy broth. Hence King Harald V's joke: the best thing about lutefisk is that if you keep cooking it, it will disappear. Lye not thoroughly rinsed out saponifies the fats, and the fish tastes of soap and smells of ammonia. Silver is doomed from the start: the alkaline fish blackens it with a permanent tarnish of silver sulphide, so tradition requires stainless steel, glass and ceramics. Plates must be washed at once, because dried remains cling like a guilty conscience. The paradox is that lutefisk itself tastes mild, almost neutral. Its whole personality is texture. The accompaniments supply the rest. ## Butter, bacon, béchamel In Norway lutefisk is steamed or baked with salt and served with melted butter, crisp bacon with crackling, ribbefett, green-pea purée, ertestuing, boiled potatoes and lefse flatbread, sometimes with syrup or brown goat's cheese, brunost. To drink, pale beer and akvavit. The Swedes say lutfisk and bake it in the oven, under a white sauce, vitsås, with freshly ground allspice and black pepper, with potatoes and peas, and in Skåne they add mustard to the sauce. The Finns, among whom it is called lipeäkala, serve it with béchamel, allspice, white pepper and potatoes. In the American Midwest it is baked in foil or an ovenproof dish and drowned in vast quantities of butter, with a white cream sauce called cod gravy, mashed potatoes, lefse, lingonberries and sometimes Scandinavian meatballs. It is washed down with coffee or beer. The farther from the fjords, the more butter. ## America more northern than the North Today the greatest bastion of lutefisk is said to be the Midwest: Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, where hundreds of thousands of Scandinavian immigrants settled in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is said that more of it is eaten in the Lutheran parishes and Sons of Norway lodges there than in the whole of Scandinavia. The emigrants came mainly from the poor inland valleys of Norway, where sea fish was a rarity, so stockfish meant a feast for them. In America it became a symbol of identity cherished more fiercely than in a homeland that had meanwhile changed. Emigration preserves better than lye. From October to December, Lutherans travel from parish to parish for Lutefisk Suppers, dinners that draw thousands of people and raise money for charity. That is also where candidates for office sit their hardest exam. The small town of Madison, Minnesota, has proclaimed itself the Lutefisk Capital of the World and greets visitors with a fibreglass cod more than seven metres tall, named Lou T. Fisk. The most bizarre chapter was written by the law. In the 1980s Wisconsin passed a law on workers' right to information about workplace hazards, with strict obligations for anyone using hazardous substances. It turned out that churches and restaurants preparing lutefisk formally fell under these rules, because they use caustic soda. The parishes grew alarmed, and an amendment appeared in the law. Statute 101.58(2)(j)2.f states plainly that "toxic substance" does not include lutefisk. A fish soaked in lye has a statutory guarantee of non-toxicity. Democracy can be tender. In 2021 a bill was even introduced in Minnesota to make cream of lutefisk the official state soup, which set off a stormy and cheerful debate full of fishy puns. ## The piece of cod that passeth all understanding Lutefisk is the hero of a self-irony that nations with better cuisine might envy. The most famous slogan, "the piece of cod that passeth all understanding", reworks a passage from the Epistle to the Philippians about the peace of God, swapping "peace" for "piece" and "God" for "cod". On T-shirts and stickers you read "Take the risk – eat lutefisk" and "You'd pillage too if all you had to eat was lutefisk". In 1980s Seattle a parody of the gun-rights slogan circulated: when lutefisk is outlawed, only outlaws will have lutefisk. Norwegian immigrants sing, to the tune of "O Tannenbaum", of a pungent aroma that sends you into a coma. There is also a joke about raccoons. A homeowner in Minnesota could not drive them out from under his floor, so a neighbour advised him to lay lutefisk down there. A week later he asks whether it helped. It did, the raccoons ran away, but a Norwegian family moved in. It was not always so cheerful. In the 19th century Christian Friele, the sharp-tongued editor of the conservative "Morgenbladet", which he ran from 1857 to 1894, called the Norwegian clergy "geistlig lutefisk", clerical lutefisk: flabby, bland and gelatinous as overcooked fish. In a religious country this caused outrage. The insult was cruel precisely because everyone knew what a failed lutefisk looked like. The writer Angela N. Blount confessed that she did not know what regret tasted like, but if it had a taste, it would be lutefisk. Perhaps. Except that regret usually belongs to someone else, while lutefisk you have to eat yourself.