Gravlax

Salmon buried in salt, sugar, and dill for three days, sliced thin and served with mustard sauce

Origin: Sweden

From the journey of Dill.

The name is the recipe: grav, grave, and lax, salmon. Buried salmon. The medieval original was buried, literally, in sand above the tideline, and it was not the mild thing eaten now. Salted and left in a pit, the fish fermented, and by the time it was dug up weeks later it had a sharpness that a modern eater would find alarming. Its surviving cousin is surströmming, the fermented Baltic herring, which gives a fair idea of the direction of travel. The earliest written record of the word is a Swedish reference from 1348. What is made today is a cure rather than a ferment, and it dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when sugar joined the salt. The sugar is what changed the dish. Salt alone draws water out and firms the flesh to something hard and severe; salt with sugar draws water out whilst holding the texture silky, and the result is a fish that is barely cooked at all in any sense, still translucent, still soft. Dill is the third element and it is the one that makes it Swedish rather than merely cured. It goes on in extravagant quantity, whole bunches crushed against the flesh, and over three days its aromatics migrate into the fish. This is dill used as a curing herb rather than a seasoning, which is a role it plays almost nowhere else, and it is the strongest single argument for dill's place in the Nordic kitchen. The accompaniment is hovmästarsås, the sweet mustard and dill sauce, and the two are never separated. Gravlax appears on the julbord at Christmas, on the midsummer table, and on any Swedish buffet worth the name.

Ingredients

Fish

  • 1.2 kg salmon fillet, skin on, centre cut, pin-boned, in two equal pieces

Cure

  • 90 g coarse sea salt
  • 70 g caster sugar
  • 2 tsp white peppercorns, coarsely crushed
  • 120 g fresh dill, two very large bunches, stalks and all, roughly chopped
  • 2 tbsp aquavit, vodka, or brandy, optional
  • 2 tsp juniper berries, crushed, optional

Method

  1. Check the fillets for pin bones by running a fingertip along the flesh and pull any you find with tweezers. Leave the skin on and do not rinse the fish.
  2. Mix the salt, sugar, and crushed white pepper in a bowl. If using, add the crushed juniper.
  3. Lay one fillet skin down in a deep dish. Rub it with the spirit if using, then press half the salt mixture into the flesh.
  4. Pile the whole of the dill over it, pressing it down hard against the flesh, and do not be sparing.
  5. Press the remaining cure into the flesh side of the second fillet and lay it flesh down on the first, so the two thick ends sit over the two thin ends and the pair lies level.
  6. Cover tightly with cling film, set a board and a couple of tins on top to weigh it down, and refrigerate for three days.
  7. Turn the whole parcel over every twelve hours, basting the fish with the brine that gathers, and re-weight it each time.
  8. After three days, lift the fish out, scrape off the dill and the cure, and pat dry. Do not rinse under the tap unless it tastes too salty to you.
  9. Slice thinly on a long shallow angle, working away from the skin and leaving the skin behind, and serve with hovmästarsås, rye bread, and boiled new potatoes.

Notes

Use the best salmon you can find and freeze it at minus 20°C for at least 24 hours first if it has not been frozen already, which is the standard precaution for any fish that will be eaten raw or lightly cured. Three days is the standard. Two gives a softer, milder cure, four a firmer and saltier one. Past five days it becomes noticeably dense. It keeps, wrapped, for a week in the refrigerator, and slices freeze well interleaved with greaseproof paper. Hovmästarsås is essential: whisk 3 tbsp of Swedish sweet mustard with 1 tbsp of Dijon, 2 tbsp of sugar, and 2 tbsp of white wine vinegar, then beat in 150 ml of neutral oil in a slow stream and finish with 4 tbsp of chopped dill. Beetroot-cured gravlax, which is a modern Swedish variation, uses the same cure with 300 g of grated raw beetroot added and produces a spectacular crimson rim.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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