1834: The craft of falukorv

In 1834 a Stockholm newspaper put the word in print for the first time: fahlukorfen. Today the recipe is a protected speciality with exact requirements for what may be called falukorv. Our version does not meet every criterion to the letter. It is an interpretation, made with wild boar, in the same spirit the recipe once had.

Sweden's wild boar population has grown fast and now stands at close to 300,000 animals. It damages farmland and causes countless traffic accidents every year. Every wild boar that ends up on a plate instead of in the forest is one animal fewer that would otherwise simply be shot and discarded. A cycle that feels right for a sausage with its roots in this district.

After almost every An evening in 1687 the same thing happens. Someone at the table asks where they can buy the sausage. It is flattering to be asked, but the answer has always been the same: you cannot, it exists only on that evening. It feels silly to keep saying no. So instead of selling you a sausage we teach you to make it, the same sausage we served then, but with wild boar. We do not use the industrial emulsification that a real falukorv requires under the protected name. What we make is an interpretation, inspired by historical recipes and the seasoning you recognise from today's falukorv, a guess at how it may have tasted before it became a factory product. You leave with more than a bag in your hand. You leave with the knowledge.

We start with fika, then we go deep. The history of the sausage, from the miners' makeshift solution to today's protected name. The chemistry that holds a sausage batter together. The hygiene that can never be compromised, which we go through twice because it matters that much. The methods and techniques you need before you stand at the bench yourself.

Then it is your turn. The groups are small, at most three people per sausage stuffer, so you really do stand with your hands in the batter instead of watching. We make two entirely different sausages. First our interpretation of falukorv, with wild boar and seasoning inspired by the classic recipe, without the industrial emulsification the original requires. Then a fresh sausage in hog casing, where the seasoning is a surprise, but we promise it will be superb once it is on the plate.

We finish at the table with the fresh sausage you have just made, together with a properly good mash and other trimmings. The craft you have learned meets the food you actually eat together. The fresh sausage we eat straight away, while the falukorv-inspired one has to be smoked first and can be collected a few days later.