Mämmi

Finnish Easter pudding of rye flour and rye malt, slow-baked almost black in a birch-bark box and served cold with cream and sugar

Origin: Turku & South-West Finland

From the journey of Rye.

Mämmi is the Finnish Easter pudding, and it is made from almost nothing: water, rye flour, and powdered rye malt, with a little salt and sometimes the zest of a bitter orange. The mixture is kept warm for hours so that the malt's enzymes turn the rye starch into sugar, then boiled, poured into shallow boxes, and baked slowly until it is very dark brown, nearly black, and set. It is eaten cold, days later, with cream and sugar. Its sweetness is the point of the method. The warm mashing, imellytys in Finnish, is the same process a brewer uses to make wort, and it produces a pudding that tastes of malt, treacle, and rye without any sugar being cooked into it. It was a Lenten food and an Easter one, and it was traditionally baked in small boxes made of birch bark, tuokkonen; the cardboard cartons in which it is sold every spring are still printed to look like birch bark. The earliest written account of how mämmi is made is usually credited to Pehr Adrian Gadd, later professor of chemistry at the Academy of Turku, in 1751, and the dish appears to have spread outward from south-west Finland during the eighteenth century. By the twentieth it was eaten at Easter across the whole country. Finns are well aware that it looks unpromising, and making jokes about its appearance is almost part of the tradition. What visitors expecting something unpleasant find is a gentle, malty, faintly bitter pudding that is closer in flavour to a dark gingerbread than to anything its colour suggests.

Ingredients

Mämmi

  • 1.5 litres water
  • 150 g powdered rye malt (mämmi malt)
  • 350 g fine rye flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 whole Seville orange, zest only, or 1 tsp dried bitter orange peel
  • 2 tbsp dark syrup (optional)

To Serve

  • 200 ml single cream, cold
  • 3 tbsp caster sugar

Method

  1. Heat 1 litre of the water to about 60 °C. Whisk in the rye malt and 150 g of the rye flour until smooth.
  2. Hold the mixture at that temperature for two hours, stirring every 15 minutes, by setting the pan in a larger pan of hot water or in an oven at its lowest setting.
  3. Heat the remaining water to the same temperature and stir it in, then whisk in the rest of the rye flour a little at a time. Sprinkle a thin layer of flour over the surface, cover, and leave warm for another hour.
  4. Bring the mixture slowly to the boil, whisking all the time, and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes until thick and glossy. Stir in the salt, orange zest, and syrup, if using.
  5. Pour into shallow ovenproof dishes or birch-bark boxes to a depth of no more than 5 cm, and smooth the tops.
  6. Bake at 150 °C for three to four hours, until the surface has set into a dark, firm skin and the mämmi has pulled slightly from the sides.
  7. Cool, cover, and refrigerate for three or four days before eating.
  8. Serve cold in spoonfuls or slices, with cold cream poured over and caster sugar sprinkled on top.

Notes

Powdered rye malt for mämmi, mämmimallas, is sold in Finnish shops before Easter and by Nordic grocers abroad. Dark rye malt flour from a baking supplier will also work. Vanilla custard, vaniljakastike, is a popular alternative to cream, and some prefer it with milk and sugar alone. Mämmi keeps for a week in the refrigerator and freezes well. Leftover mämmi is sometimes worked into rye bread dough, where it adds colour and sweetness.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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