Finnish Cuisine

Finnish cuisine is notable for combining traditional country fare and haute cuisine with contemporary continental-style cooking. Fish and meat, usually pork, beef or reindeer, play a prominent role in traditional dishes in some parts of the country, while elsewhere the dishes have traditionally included vegetables and mushrooms. Finnish foods often use wholemeal products such as rye, barley and oats, and berries such as bilberries, lingonberries, cloudberries and sea buckthorn. Milk and its derivatives, buttermilk among them, are common as food, drink and recipe ingredients, and the potato replaced various turnips in traditional cooking after its introduction in the eighteenth century.