RedHeadedGirl’s Historical Kitchen: Sjätte Tunnan

This is a different post than usual. As you may have heard, I was in Stockholm last week!  In the Old Town (Gamla Stan) of Stockholm, there is a medieval themed restaurant that uses recipes from several different medieval cookbooks, and you know I was raring to try it out.

It’s in a old vault, I think the server said it was a 15th century building? It’s VERY atmospheric. The lighting is mostly candles with low lights at the top of the vaulted ceiling, and the table are trestles.  They also only give you a knife and a spoon- forks weren’t a thing until the 18th century in Europe.  (There were forks off to the side, in case you just couldn’t manage, but I did a lot of spearing with my knife and eating off the blade. It’s fun.)

Amanda and I chose the “Goodman’s Feast” which gave us a sampler of several starters and main dishes. It was a LOT for two people. Like, a LOT.

The starters were a cold sage soup with a pickled egg, and a platter of charcuteries. Both of these were good, though the sage soup was REALLY sage-y (but after a day of climbing around the Birka UNESCO World Heritage site, I needed the salt in the pickled egg). The charcuteries included pickled reindeer meat, pate of some kind, sausage, a bit of roasted deer meat, and various berry sauces (one was blueberry, another was lingonberry). Also a pickled turnip chunk.

The main course was SO MUCH MEAT.

Herb baked trout, braised lamb, wild boar meatballs and rabbit stew; served with mashed turnips, white mash and pea purée.

The lamb was so tender it fell off the bones, and the meatballs were to die for. The rabbit stew had the most medieval flavor profile of everything- it was flavored with saffron. The trout I only tried a bit of, because again so much meat, and it was okay, for fish (I’m not a big fish person). Had I another stomach, I could have had quite a bit more of the pea puree.

Dessert, which we VERY GAMELY ATE despite being so full (SO. Very. Full) was a crumb pie with red currants, sour almond creme, and a spiced white wine hypocras with a wafer. It was DELICIOUS.

Now, were these authentically medieval? No, of course not. They clearly all had their origins in medieval cooking, some more than others (the rabbit stew? YES. The charcuteries? Eh. The lamb? Kinda). But allowing for adjustments in modern tastes that need to sell, modern cooking techniques, and food safety concerns, I’m quite pleased. There were also no potatoes, which was good because between the hiking and the climbing on rocks I’d done all day, I was too tired to flip tables. Also Amanda would have been completely mortified.

The menu specified which cookbooks they used, and indicated which cookbook each dish came from, but not which recipe. Nerd that I am, I asked our server if they had a list somewhere, of which recipe was used as the starting point.  There was a kind of confused conversation where we were talking around each other- she said that the cook came up with his own recipes, and I was like yes, I understand, but which one did he start with? And she popped into the kitchen, and came back holding a book, and said that this was one of the books that he used in his research- it’s by a pair of food historians that recreated several recipes. She said that he had four copies, and that I could have one.

I sputtered quite a lot, managed to choke out “tack så mycket!” and she was like “well, it’s in Swedish, I don’t know how much it’ll help you…” and I was like “I CAN DO FOOD WORDS.”  (I can do food words and genealogy related words, which delighted a man in an antique store. I need more words.)

It’s beautiful!I can’t wait until I get a chance to play with it. I had, just earlier that day, spent WAY too much money on a new book by the same authors about Viking food, so this was either a delightful coincidence, or a sign that everything happened just as it was supposed to, take your pick.

So should I go back, and I might, I’d suggest you try the lamb, or the meatballs. The rabbit stew is VERY good, if you like rabbit. I know it’s not to everyone’s taste. Also the beer and wine menu is very extensive. In a week of VERY good eating, this one one of the highlights.