Köttbullar

The story

Small meatballs in brown gravy are today, thanks to IKEA's restaurants, perhaps the best-known Swedish dish in the world — but köttbullar on the Christmas table have a much longer and more personal history than any shopping center. The secret of a good köttbulle is in the seasoning: the real thing is made with grated onion sautéed in butter and a pinch of allspice or nutmeg, spices that reached Swedish kitchens through overseas trade — allspice from the Caribbean, nutmeg from the East Indies. Every Swedish family claims that its recipe — the proportion of breadcrumbs soaked in milk, the kind of ground meat, the size of the meatball — beats all the others, so at Christmas the köttbulle is often a subject of family debate as well. They are served with lingonberry jam, whose tartness cuts through the richness of the meat, just as cranberry sauce accompanies turkey in America. For American descendants of Swedes, köttbullar is often the first word of Swedish cooking they learn to recognize, but the version from grandmother's table, with homemade brown gravy, has little to do with the one from the blue-and-yellow furniture store.