Gravlax is a Nordic dish of salmon cured with a mixture of salt, sugar and dill, with a history reaching back centuries, including a reference in the 1348 Diplomatarium Norvegicum connected to salmon fishery officials. Rather than the medieval practice of fermenting fish buried in the ground, from which the dish takes its name, meaning buried salmon in Northern Germanic, modern gravlax is prepared with a dry marinade of salt, sugar and dill under which the fish cures for between twelve hours and several days as osmosis draws moisture from the flesh into the surrounding mixture. It is typically served as an appetizer, sliced thin and accompanied by hovmastarsas, a mustard-dill sauce, alongside bread or boiled potatoes.
Facts
Partially Attested
Origin Period, To (Year)Sourced to the subject's own accountMarks the conventional end of the Middle Ages, the period Wikipedia's own History section brackets the sand-buried, lightly fermented curing method to, before the modern dry salt-sugar-dill cure used today took over at an undocumented later date. Disputed
Origin Period, From (Year)Sourced to the subject's own accountWikipedia calls this the dish's perhaps oldest reference: a nickname recorded in the 1348 Diplomatarium Norvegicum for a salmon-fishery delegate, not a firm founding date for the dish itself. Classification
Dietary SuitabilitySourced to the subject's own accountContains Fish or Shellfish 1 Origin RegionSourced to the subject's own accountNordic countries (Scandinavia) 1 Connections
In Cuisine
Source Gravlax (Wikipedia)
Uses Ingredient
Source Gravlax (Wikipedia)
Source Gravlax (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Gravlax (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWikipedia, Gravlax, lead paragraph
gravlax...is a Nordic dish consisting of salmon that is cured using a mix of salt, sugar and dill.
Wikipedia, Gravlax, History section, first paragraph
Perhaps the oldest reference is found in 1348 in Diplomatarium Norvegicum as the nickname of a man named Olafr, who was a delegate in a salmon fishery.
Wikipedia, Gravlax, History section, second sentence
During the Middle Ages, gravlax was made by fishermen, who salted the salmon and lightly fermented it by burying it in the sand above the high-tide line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravlax (dietary-suitability)
Gravlax, graavilohi, gravad lax, gravlaks or graved salmon is a Nordic dish consisting of salmon that is cured using a mix of salt, sugar and dill.
- In Cuisine: Swedish Cuisine, Wikipedia category list
- Uses Ingredient: Sugar, Infobox main_ingredient field: salmon, salt, sugar, dill/spruce
- Uses Ingredient: Dill, Infobox main_ingredient field: salmon, salt, sugar, dill/spruce
View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.