Distasteful Holiday Traditions Scandinavian vs Mexican “Delights”

By Robin Dohrn-Simpson

You take a perfectly good piece of fish, soak it in lye and then bake it until it’s gelatinous like mackerel-flavored Jell-O, only worse.” That’s what my husband says when recounting his first Christmas being a part of my family. Norway’s famous—or infamous—food, Lutefisk, is a Midwestern Christmas feast tradition that dates to the Viking days. Goofy tales are recounted about how it came about. Perhaps somebody accidentally dropped the cod in an ash pile (Lye is made from ash). They were too poor to throw it out, so they soaked it in water and ate it anyway. Another story is that the Irish put lye in the Viking’s fish barrels to poison them and the Vikings liked the lye-poisoned fish.

Lutefisk is usually Cod, dried, and salted (a great way to preserve your fish for years) and then soaked in a lye solution of wood ashes soaked in water, to rehydrate it. It is then baked until it’s delicious (according to a few deeply disturbed Scandinavians) or outright nasty (according to any well-adjusted humans who walk upright).

I married into a Mexican family and was optimistic to have a new holiday tradition. Surely the holiday tables in Mexico could never feature anything so slimy, so pungent, so diabolically calculated to make one’s nether regions do a double reverse with a one-and-a-half twist. My new family would never do that to me, right?

Wrong! Their Christmas feast is menudo, a traditional soup, made with cow’s stomach in a broth with red chili pepper, hominy, lime, onions, and oregano.

Recently, thanks to “23 and Me”, we discovered that my husband is more Scottish than Mexican. Hopefully there’s no haggis in my future!

Photos, Opposite: Lutefisk; This page: Menudo; Menudo; Lutefisk for sale