In most lunch restaurants and every staff canteen that sell Swedish food, Swedish pancakes are on the menu. You can rely on it. It feels dependable. Swedish pancakes are served in a particular way – with whipped cream and jam – and are always, always served together with a bowl of steaming pea and ham soup and bread.
It’s fun to watch Swedes enjoying Swedish pancakes on Thursdays. In the staff canteen, grown men queue up to ladle their soup into their bowls and pile pancake after pancake onto a plate like a Scooby snack. Then they gleefully slather on the jam and smother it with whipped cream. It’s like watching a jelly and ice cream party for 10-year-olds.
Swedish pancakes on Thursdays
Pancakes on Thursdays are especially interesting for us Brits. You see, we are deprived. We only get to eat pancakes once a year – on ‘Pancake Day’. ‘Pancake Day’ as it happens is quite soon – Shrove Tuesday. And on this day, when Swedes traditionally tuck into creamy Lent buns known as ‘semla’, we Brits make pancakes and cover them with sugar, lemon juice and chocolate sauce.
But only once a year.
It’s not always that easy to understand how the rules of different societies work, especially when it comes to food. A Swedish customer of mine once told me a story about some Japanese visitors to Sweden whom he was responsible for looking after.
The Japanese were visiting on a pancake Thursday. At lunchtime, the Swede took the Japanese visitors to the company restaurant.
Unsure of what to do when faced with the lunchtime food, the Japanese took a bowl each and filled it with pancakes. They then spooned on jam and cream. And finally, they poured pea soup over the whole lot. They were left with an unholy mess seeping over the edges of the bowl.
The Swede saw what his Japanese visitors had done and was unsure of how to handle the situation. He could tell them they had made a mistake by not putting the soup in a bowl and the pancakes on a separate plate. But he felt this could potentially embarrass them and force them to lose face. This could be devastating to them and their business relationship.
So, he did the only thing he thought an adaptive, culturally sensitive person should do. He took a bowl, filled it with Swedish pancakes and cream and then he smothered it with soup. He sat down with his Japanese visitors and slowly forced down the soggy contents of the bowl with a spoon.
Read more from Neil on his blog Watching the Swedes.
