Fish and onion soup (modern reconstruction)
Trout or salmon poached at the end of a simmered broth of onion and root vegetables, a present-day reconstruction of coastal cooking built on excavated fish bones and a boiling pot.
Denmark
Recipes by the places recorded in their sources.
Denmark
Lamb, barley and cabbage pottage (modern reconstruction)
Lamb shoulder simmered with pearl barley, turnip and leafy cabbage in one pot, a present-day reconstruction built from the animals, grains and vegetables of northern European farming.
Elevated risk
Spring nettle pottage (modern reconstruction)
Young stinging nettle shoots cooked with bacon, onion, garlic and three roots into a thick spring soup, from a Danish Viking museum's recipe, with a meat-broth variation and ember-baked turnips.
Viking Age butter
Cream agitated until its fat globules join into a solid mass and release buttermilk, the dairy fat a northern household could concentrate, salt and keep when milk itself would not last.
Viking Age bread (Birka and Knivberga finds)
A small, dense cake of ground barley mixed with liquid and cooked against a hot surface, the form a low-gluten northern cereal takes when a household turns stored grain into bread.
Rugbrød
This Danish sourdough loaf combines wheat flour and kernels with rye flour and cracked rye, then rises in three tins before a long, low finishing bake.
Barley koji
Steamed pearled barley grown into a white koji cake with Aspergillus oryzae over about 36 hours in a 30 °C chamber, turned three times under a damp cloth.
Barley and oat porridge (Viking Age)
Crushed or milled barley cooked in water until the starch softens and the mixture thickens, the plainest way a northern household turned stored grain into a meal, here with apple and hazelnut.
Remoulade (Danish)
Danish remoulade is a thick, yellow, mayonnaise-based sauce flecked with finely chopped pickled vegetables. Arla’s quick home version stirs piccalilli remoulade purée with mayonnaise, crème fraîche, diced apple and capers.
Elevated risk
Broad-bean mash (modern reconstruction)
Cooked broad beans crushed to a thick paste with garlic and salt, a museum preparation built on the one European pulse that was already old when the Viking Age began.
High risk
Mushroom garum (koji garum)
Mushroom garum is a savoury, smoked sauce made by crushing mushrooms with salt and rice koji and letting the mixture brew for months, a modern use of the garum method without fish.
Viking Age cheese and curds
Soft fresh curd made by draining whey from milk already thickened by bacterial acidification, the simplest point in a northern dairy tradition that also produced skyr, ymer and whey itself.
Elevated risk
Sol over Gudhjem
Sol over Gudhjem layers hot-smoked herring and vegetables on buttered rye bread, topped with egg yolk.
Elevated risk
Dried fruit and berries (Viking Age, reconstructed)
Apple slices dried until most of their water has gone, shrinking and concentrating into leathery or crisp rings, with the modern controls that a plausible old technique turns out to need.