Talk:Surströmming

Change in the order of things

The statement "While the ordinance is no longer on the books, retailers still maintain the date for the "premiere"." is no longer correct, you can find it in many supermarkets at least in Skåne, Sweden (very south part) any time of the year. This is my own experience, and i have no reference, but it is equally available in online food shops with home delivery; https://www.mat.se/butik/surstromming-rode-ulven-300g?gclid=CjwKCAiA9f7QBRBpEiwApLGUioUiXXSwtsvr-aAEy_n5_fXs8Ox9Gdg9tX4audzN5kGAJS-cWHrVlxoCwMEQAvD_BwE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.249.138.179 (talk) 00:08, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Redlinks

For pete's sake! It's got two red links! The cleanup tag seems excessive. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:20, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and removed it. Jonathunder 02:49, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

LOL, tag-o-maniac ;-) Fred-Chess 10:08, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Tag-o-maniacallity(in Cornish) levels are increasing, nowadays. Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 11:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Acquired taste

Re: the acquired taste paragraph, I didn't publish it anywhere, but I tried it, and liked it the first time. It has a strong mustardy taste. I don't know first hand whether the tin can explode, but it certainly was grossly swollen, and the person I got it from presumably had some reason for sending it wrapped in no less than three heavy plastic bags. The smell is definitely strong, but didn't strike me with the force described in some of the narratives. 71.41.210.146 01:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

What brand did you eat, how old was it. I have several cans from January 2007 which are revolting to open. We had a collegue go home because of the smell.217.86.185.32 (talk) 06:44, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Banned from airlines - true or not?

What about the sources for the banned-from-airlines part of the article? The linked BBC news page is dated 1st of April 2006, which might even be an Aprils fool. Anybody can confirm this story? --130.243.160.120 22:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Judging from a few Swedish papers, BBC is obviously quoting some of the major Swedish papers: SvD, March 23, DN, March 24

/ Mats Halldin (talk) 23:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The BBC has also been known to use the 1st of April to run deceptive stories which look like jokes but are actually true, just to keep readers on their toes.130.225.25.169 07:13, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It is not banned on carry on luggage if you check it. Swiss air required I put in into special baggage claims. It is not illegal to have it on a plane, rather they count it as a liquid. 217.86.185.32 (talk) 06:44, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

It certainly wouldn't be potentially explosive. The pressure inside a can of hairspray or deodourant is far greater (and the walls of the can much thinner than a food container can) and they have no problem allowing those on planes! StanPomeray (talk) 07:02, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

The tins of surströmning are tough pieces of metal that are shut of at a low preassure, and still they reach shops in an expanded shape. If spraycans had the same preassure, it would explode if one would just make a small disperse of the fluid. --85.164.222.162 (talk) 00:54, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I checked the site of the swedish transport agency and: "Surströmming är oftast inte tillåtet att packa vare sig i handbagage eller incheckat bagage på grund av risken för läckage och skador, kontrollera därför med det flygbolag som du ska resa med vad som gäller." Which roughy translated thanks to google and in summary " "Fermented herring are usually not allowed to pack either in hand baggage or checked baggage due to the risk of leakage and damage, therefore check with the airline you are traveling with the deal." The airline I'm flying back with does not mention anything about it, the nuance is in the "usually" and "check with the airline". I will try to carry a single tin in my checked baggage.

References

Earwitness about alleged taste

I heard a reportage in Swedish P3, where the price of a radio game was one bite of Surströmming. The winner took that bite, and then screamed:

"Fyfaan! Fyfaan! Det smakar som skit!

translation: "Shame you S*t*n! Shame you S*t*n! It tastes like ... (guess the rest yourself) ...

Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 11:45, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

The talkpage is for discussing improvements to the article, please avoid filling it up with amusing anecdotes which have no place in it. BTW, I've reverted your scare quotes around "delicacy", please see my edit summary for why. Bishonen | talk 12:02, 2 July 2007 (UTC).

Actually the talk pages are a terrific place to learn more about the "unofficial" bits & pieces of a certain entry. It does absolutely no harm, since it's not part of the actual "encyclopedic" entry, where these type comments would obviously be out of place. I fully understand some editors want to prove just how knowledgable they are about the thousands of rules governing Wiki, but being so stiff about a completely harmless, even interesting and/or useless observation, tends to make the place very boring. Wiki is used less & less often for serious academic reference, because of the endless back & forth of professional reverters & habitual edit-warriors. Don't bring the same type of completely unnecessary policing into the informal talk pages. If you just really HAVE to show your vast knowledge of Wiki procedures & policies, do it where it counts .... in the actual entry. Don't waste everyone's time telling people how they are wrong over on the non-encyclopedia talk pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.159.73.185 (talk) 02:28, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Eating surströmming

The "right" way to eat surströmming is a topic of much controversy and differs much depending on who you ask. I have myself grown up in northern Sweden where the surströmming tradition is very strong compared to the southern parts and I have never seen or even heard (it is a very discussed topic around the table) anyone adding gräddfil. Also worth noting is that I feel most people consider the snaps far more important than what sort of potato you have, also most people would consider chives necessarily and so on.

Someone has oblivious written what he/she consider the right way without any consideration about NPOW this section should be completely rewritten with more of a list of common and uncommon ingredients.

There is no right or even no classic way of eating surströmming but it differs over time and geography.

Also the importance of the snaps must be stressed more since that is probably the tradition that is most universal when eating surströmming. (Which also is true for most festivity gathering in Sweden for that part.)

Brainz (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've had a hack at it. Please adapt as required. Everyone should put in input from their local variations. 210.9.143.119 (talk) 09:40, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

...with due regard for WP:OR, of course! 210.9.143.119 (talk) 11:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

"you either love it or hate it"

The last paragraph of the section 'Eating Surströmming' needs to be re-written. The sentences like "In fact, there are usually no middle levels - you either love it or hate it." don't belong to encyclopedia.

Surströmming is *not* rotten.

Under "Origin" there is much talk about rotten fish. It's a misconception. Surströmming is not rotten, it's fermented. Just as the next section ("Canning") states. The Origin section sounds more like a myth. The history I've heard is that people tried to conserve fish in brine despite not having enough salt, which led to fermentation. They had to eat it in order to survive, and found it quite tasty, despite the smell. 85.228.184.214 (talk) 00:57, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Surströmming in English

I'm not sure, but I think "soured (Baltic) herring" is not correct, it should be "Sour Baltic Herring." --Christopher Forster (talk) 20:36, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Information that the preparation of surströmming was restricted to the High Coast (a term coined in the 1970s) is wrong

Surströmming i dåtidens lunchlåda Det finns inga uppgifter om när man började lägga in surströmming men vid mitten av 1700-talet åt man surströmming allmänt från Dalarna upp till Västerbotten och även i Österbotten.

Förutom strömming surades annan fisk som sik och mört. Surströmming var tidigare något av en basföda hos allmogen i vissa delar av Sverige. Ofta bestod den matsäck som man tog med sig ut i skogen av långmjölk och surströmming - båda fermenterade produkter som höll sig bra.

From a reliable site: (translation)

Sursströmming in packed lunches in the 18th century

There is no information available that records when surströmming was first prepared, but in the mid 18th century surströmming was eaten from as far south as Dalarna up to Västerbotten and even in Österbotten.

Apart from strömming (Baltic herring) other fish was soured such as whitefish and the common roach. Surströmming was previously a staple among the peasantry in certain regions in Sweden. Often the packed lunch taken out to the forest would consist of långmjölk (soured milk using bacteria from a fern) and surströmming - both fermented products that had good keeping properties.

What this implies for the now part of the Swedish Tourist Industry´s promotions. It is true that surströmming was a staple there, but it was much more widely spread in northern Sweden.

source: The Swedish National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket)

RPSM (talk) 08:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Picture of an unopened can?

Reading stuff about how the can bulges to an unnatural shape due to the gases gives a curious image. Anyone got a picture of an unopened can to put in the article? Sera404 (talk) 00:02, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

how it smells

My edit was not intended as a joke. It actually smells like I described. Boeing720 (talk) 01:45, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

origin

I don't understand this sentence: "One explanation of the origins of this method of preservation is that it began long ago, when brining food was quite expensive owing to the cost of salt. The fish are marinated in a strong brine solution that draws out the blood, which is replaced by a weaker brine...." My problem is, when this explanation is introduced by the idea that salt was expensive, it is to show how the method being explained was less expensive. Yet the method being explained involves salt. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 01:30, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed section from "Controversy" to "Infamy"

There's no real 'controversy' with surströmming; nobody is opposed to its existence. But its nature as an...unusual food deserves to be documented, so I've changed the section name to "infamy", which better describes it. cnte ^(talk) 12:08, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Video at Wikimania 2019

I made this video of Wikimedia Sweden serving and explaining Surströmming at Wikimania 2019. If no one objects I might add it to the article so as to more fully explain it in a multimedia format.--Discott (talk) 16:29, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@Discott: No objection from me. It could go in an "external links" section (which doesn't exist at the moment) if there isn't a good way to cite it in the prose. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:41, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Anachronist: thanks! That would be great if you we could cite it in the prose. I do want to try and upload it again as I feel it did not upload very well the last time I did it.--Discott (talk) 08:28, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Discott: It didn't occur to me that the video in the upper right is already on Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia isn't really intended to stream video content, especially high-definition video like that. It should be reduced from 1920x1080 to 640x360 (the player doesn't pop out at full resolution anyway, so it doesn't need to be so big). The metadata on File:Surströmming at Wikimani 2019.webm also says it's 15 hours long?? And it's huge at 460 MB. Try editing it to be a reasonable length showing highlights of interest, and re-encode it at a lower resolution and lower bitrate. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:06, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Anachronist: thanks for the tips. I am still new to the uploading of video on Commons. Its really only 14 min long but for some reason it did not compile it properly when I did the upload. I think uploading it as a smaller file as you suggested might fix this problem. At least it works and it is in a format that Wikipedia accepts. Making it easier to get that right is quite a bit of progress compared to how it used to be on uploading videos.--Discott (talk) 21:57, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Cost of salt?

The "Origin" section has this: "Preservation of fish through fermentation in a weak brine may have developed when brining was still expensive due to the cost of salt."

What cost? There is salty ocean all around Sweden! The herring live in it, and they are caught in it! Seawater is a good brine all by itself, and if evaporated it can be made stronger. For free.

There is a source cited, but it isn't accessible online. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:41, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be under the impression that the process of producing sea salt is cost-free, which it very much isn't. Like any production involving the heating and evaporating of huge (and I mean HUGE) amounts of water, it requires a tremendous amount of space and no small amount of thermal energy either. Sure, you won't need a furnace to evaporate water, but you'll need a large and intensely focused source of heat, which still requires highly specialized facilities.

Simply put: you may think salt extracted from seawater is "free", but it really isn't. Even using seawater as brine isn't without costs, as it needs to be filtered several times over to remove all the pollution in the water. And even then it needs to be "distilled" (so to speak) at least to some degree to be properly useful for that particular purpose. Captain Seasick (talk) 01:20, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

You know, I don't even remember making that comment above. It's 4 years old.

I don't disagree with anything you wrote, except that "highly specialized facilities" were not needed in olden days to produce sea salt.

I know there is a cost to make dry salt, especially if it must be mined. However, the cost of dipping a bucket of seawater out of the sea to use as brine is negligible. Purification to remove infectious diseases would involve boiling it for a while, still negligible. Yes, there's a bigger cost to scaling it up, but making a small supply of Surströmming for the family to consume over a season, the higher cost would be the fish, it seems. ~Anachronist (talk) 03:05, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

List of Delicacies

The link to List of Delicacies in the see also section leads to a small, and informative in its own right, article, that's just Delicacies It isn't a list. Not sure what the normal thing to do is for a niche situation like this, but doesn't seem like it should be there, or perhaps should link somewhere else 87.80.166.129 (talk) 15:41, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Changed the link to Delicacies. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:56, 21 September 2024 (UTC)