Köttbullar

Sweden's small meatballs of beef and pork, seasoned hard with allspice and served with cream sauce, mashed potato and lingonberry

Origin: Stockholm & Sweden

From the journey of Allspice.

Nothing about the meat in a Swedish meatball is unusual. The mixture of beef and pork, the breadcrumbs soaked in milk, and the grated onion softened in butter are common to half of northern Europe. What makes it Swedish is the spicing, and specifically the allspice: kryddpeppar, literally spice pepper, used with a confidence that surprises cooks meeting it for the first time. A teaspoon and a half in a kilogramme of meat is not a background note but the leading flavour, and it is the single thing that separates köttbullar from a Danish frikadelle or an Italian polpetta. On 28 April 2018 the official Sweden account posted that köttbullar were based on a recipe King Charles XII brought home from Turkey in the early eighteenth century, and signed off by telling its readers to stick to the facts. The post travelled a very long way. The frame around it is genuine: Charles XII spent five years in Ottoman territory after the defeat at Poltava in 1709, three and a half of them at Bender and the remainder under a form of house arrest near Adrianople, and he did return to Sweden with Ottoman habits, of which coffee is the best attested and kåldolmar, the stuffed cabbage roll descended from dolma, is the clearest culinary case. The meatball claim is thinner. Minced, bound, and spiced balls of meat were being cooked across Europe and the Near East long before 1709, and Swedish food historians said so promptly. What can be defended is the spice cupboard rather than the recipe: the eighteenth century is when allspice, black pepper, and ginger became ordinary in Swedish kitchens rather than costly, and the meatball as it is now seasoned belongs to that shift. The plate matters as much as the meatball. Mashed potato, a cream sauce made in the same pan, quick-pickled cucumber, and a spoonful of lingonberry preserve: the last is not a garnish but the acid the dish is built to need, since without it the cream and the fat have nothing to work against. Boiled new potatoes replace the mash in summer, and the same meatballs turn up cold on the julbord at Christmas alongside the pickled herring and Jansson's temptation. IKEA reports selling around a billion of them a year, which has made a Swedish home dish one of the most widely eaten in the world and has also flattened it. The furniture-shop version is smaller, milder, and sweeter than what is cooked at home, where the allspice is heavier and the sauce is thinner.

Ingredients

Meatballs

  • 1 small onion, finely grated
  • 25 g butter
  • 70 g fine dried breadcrumbs
  • 150 ml whole milk
  • 500 g minced beef
  • 500 g minced pork
  • 1 egg
  • 1.5 tsp ground allspice
  • 0.75 tsp ground white pepper
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 40 g butter, for frying

Cream sauce

  • 30 g butter
  • 30 g plain flour
  • 400 ml beef stock
  • 200 ml double cream
  • 1 tsp dark soy sauce, for colour
  • 0.25 tsp ground allspice

To serve

  • 1 kg floury potatoes, for mashing
  • 6 tbsp lingonberry preserve
  • 1 cucumber, thinly sliced and pressed with vinegar and sugar

Method

  1. Soften the grated onion in the 25g of butter over a low heat for six or seven minutes until sweet and translucent, then set it aside to cool completely. Warm onion will start to cook the meat.
  2. Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk for ten minutes until they have taken it all up and there is no loose liquid in the bowl.
  3. Combine the beef, pork, egg, soaked crumbs, cooled onion, allspice, white pepper, and salt. Work the mixture with your hands for a good two minutes: it should turn noticeably tacky and hold together in a ribbon.
  4. Fry a teaspoon of it in a pan and taste. This is the only chance to adjust the allspice and the salt, and Swedish cooks season these more heavily than seems right in the raw mixture.
  5. Chill the mixture for half an hour. Cold mixture rolls cleanly and holds its shape in the pan.
  6. Roll into balls of about 25g, smaller than a walnut. Wet hands stop the mixture sticking. You should get around forty.
  7. Fry them in batches in butter over a medium heat, shaking the pan every so often so they brown all round and stay spherical. Six or seven minutes a batch. Do not crowd the pan or they will steam and go grey.
  8. Set the cooked meatballs aside in a warm dish. Leave the browned residue in the pan, since the sauce is made in it.
  9. Melt the 30g of butter in the same pan, stir in the flour, and cook the roux for two minutes over a medium heat, scraping up everything stuck to the base.
  10. Add the stock a little at a time, whisking smooth between each addition, then the cream, the soy sauce, and the quarter-teaspoon of allspice. Simmer for five minutes until it coats the back of a spoon, and season.
  11. Return the meatballs to the sauce and warm them through for five minutes. Serve with mashed potato, pressed cucumber, and a good spoonful of lingonberry on the side of each plate.

Notes

The allspice is the dish, so buy it whole and grind it if you can; pre-ground allspice loses its clove and pepper notes within a few months and the meatballs go flat without them. Do not substitute mixed spice, which is a different blend altogether. A kilogramme of meat is the right quantity to make at once, since these freeze well raw on a tray and can be fried from frozen with a few minutes added. If you cannot find lingonberry preserve, a tart redcurrant jelly is the closest substitute, though it is sweeter and you will want less of it.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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