Dillkött

Swedish poached lamb or veal in a dill sauce sharpened with vinegar and sugar

Origin: Sweden

From the journey of Dill.

Dillkött is Swedish home cooking of the plainest sort: meat poached gently in water with dill stalks, the broth turned into a white sauce, and a great deal of chopped dill stirred in at the end. The meat is traditionally lamb, and in older books mutton, though veal is equally standard and gives a paler and more delicate result. It appears in Swedish cookery writing from the eighteenth century onwards, and it belongs to the same northern European family as the Polish and German dill sauces for boiled meat. Its close relative is kalvdans country cooking, where nothing is browned and nothing is roasted; the pot is the whole apparatus. What sets it apart from a plain white sauce is the finish. Vinegar and sugar go in at the end in roughly equal measure, giving the sauce a distinct sweet-sour edge, and that combination, sötsur, runs right through Swedish cooking, from pickled beetroot to hovmästarsås to the brown sauce with meatballs. Without it the dish is bland; with it, it is unmistakably Swedish. The dill is used twice, which is the technique worth taking away. The stalks go into the poaching water, where they can stand up to an hour and a half of simmering and give the broth a deep background note. The fronds go into the sauce off the heat, where they keep their volatile top note. Using only one or the other gives half a dish. It is served with boiled potatoes and nothing else, and it is Thursday food rather than Sunday food.

Ingredients

Meat

  • 1 kg boneless lamb shoulder or veal breast, cut into 4 cm pieces

Poaching

  • 1.2 litres water, to cover
  • 1 whole onion, halved
  • 1 whole carrot, halved
  • 1 large bunch dill stalks, tied with string
  • 8 whole white peppercorns
  • 2 whole bay leaves
  • 2 tsp salt

Sauce

  • 40 g butter
  • 40 g plain flour
  • 600 ml strained poaching broth
  • 100 ml double cream
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • 2 tbsp caster sugar

To Finish

  • 6 tbsp fresh dill fronds, finely chopped

Method

  1. Put the meat in a pan, cover with cold water, bring slowly to the boil, and skim off the grey foam that rises for the first few minutes until the surface runs clear.
  2. Add the onion, carrot, tied dill stalks, peppercorns, bay, and salt. Reduce to the barest simmer, cover, and cook for an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half until the meat is tender.
  3. Lift the meat out with a slotted spoon and keep it warm. Strain the broth and discard the vegetables and the spent dill stalks.
  4. Melt the butter in a clean pan, stir in the flour, and cook the roux for two minutes without colouring it.
  5. Whisk in the strained broth a ladleful at a time, beating smooth, then simmer for six to eight minutes until it thickens to a pouring consistency. Stir in the cream.
  6. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the vinegar and the sugar. Taste, and adjust until the sauce is clearly both sweet and sour rather than merely creamy.
  7. Return the meat to the sauce to warm through, then stir in the chopped dill fronds off the heat.
  8. Serve with plainly boiled potatoes and a little more dill scattered over.

Notes

Veal breast gives the paler and more traditional restaurant version; lamb shoulder is the domestic one and has far more flavour. Either works, but do not use lean leg, which dries out over ninety minutes of poaching. Do not throw away the leftover broth. Whatever is not used for the sauce makes an excellent base for a soup the following day. The sweet-sour balance is the part people get wrong. If it tastes like a plain béchamel with herbs in it, add vinegar and sugar in equal small increments until it does not. The same sauce, without the meat, is served over hard-boiled eggs, over poached white fish, and over boiled new potatoes, and it is the direct ancestor of the dill sauces of Poland and northern Germany.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

To explore — select an ingredient below.

Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
© 2026 The Gastrographer. All original research, narratives, and illustrations. All rights reserved.