18th-Century Food Culture in Finland

Dinners with up to 30 courses

18th-century gentry took their cue from French court etiquette, with the Swedish royal court as the closest model. A royal dinner could run to 20–30 courses, served in rounds: first soup at the center of the table, then large roasts, oysters and salads, and finally sweets and fruit stacked into pyramids.

In gentry households, meat was served in variety: veal, lamb, beef and pork, alongside game birds such as duck, turkey, black grouse and hazel grouse. Fish was just as abundant — salmon, perch, pike, pike-perch, eel and herring — and festive tables also carried lobster, crayfish, oysters, anchovy and caviar. Vegetables such as asparagus, lettuce, green beans and carrots weren't eaten raw but stewed in cream, milk or sauce.

What about ordinary people?

For ordinary people, 18th-century food was mainly porridge and gruel, salted meat and fish, turnips, swedes, cabbage, and buttermilk thinned with water. Bread was rye or barley — not wheat, which was a privilege of the gentry. In the Turku region, this basic diet stayed almost unchanged for hundreds of years.

Meat was rare for ordinary people: when animals were slaughtered, the most valuable cuts were sold, leaving common folk with fatty bones, heads and feet.

Preserving food was essential given the short growing season and long winter: milk was turned into butter, cheese and buttermilk, and fish was dried or salted. Eastern and Western Finland's food traditions differed from each other — the east favored sour flavors, the west sweeter ones.

Compare this: at the court of Turku Castle, the gentry were served about 350 g of meat daily, servants only half that — and the lords' table ate wheat bread, while everyone else ate rye and barley.

The table and its manners change

Table manners were changing too: porcelain tableware became common, dining rooms became their own separate spaces, the fork gained a third prong instead of two, and napkins became standard. On the drinks side, French, Portuguese and Spanish wines were served alongside champagne and arrack punch.

Coffee arrived in Sweden-Finland in the 18th century as a luxury good, with its import and consumption tightly regulated. It was banned four separate times over the century, for economic and moral reasons — officials feared both the money flowing abroad and coffee's effect on manners. Under the reign of Gustav III (1771–1792), drinking coffee was finally permitted.

The book that taught the era's housewives

One of the century's most influential cookbooks was written by a Finnish-born author: Cajsa Warg (born Anna Christina Warg). Warg was born in Oulu in 1703 and spent most of her life working for the Klinckowström family in Stockholm. In 1755, she published Hjelpreda i Hushållningen för Unga Fruentimber — the book went through 14 editions in total and is considered the century's most-read cookbook, including in Finnish bourgeois households.

Warg's recipes made generous use of imported spices such as ginger, coriander, aniseed and truffle, and the book devoted an entire chapter to sausage dishes. The word "köttbullar" (meatballs) appeared in print for the first time in this very book. The work has since been digitized and is freely available to read.

Sugar arrives in Turku

In 1758, Finland's first sugar refinery was founded in Turku. The refinery brought sweetness a little closer to the ordinary table, though sugar remained an expensive treat for a long time. The refinery operated until 1824.

Sugar was put to many uses at the era's festive tables: baking almond and sugar breads and meringues, cooking jams and marmalades (plum preserves in particular), and preserving and candying fruit such as peaches and pears. Spun sugar was also used purely as decoration on top of desserts.

Wine rings, the Warg way

Cajsa Warg's recipe, 1755/1795

Ingredients:

• 425 g wheat flour

• 1.3 L milk (minimum 3% fat)

• 8 beaten eggs

• 160 ml sweet wine (Spanish or similar)

• 160 ml rose water

• about 1.5 tsp cardamom

• about 1.5 tsp mace

• 212.5 g sugar

• 850 g butter

• 2 tbsp thick yeast starter

Method:

1. Warm the flour in a pan (near the oven or fire).

2. Heat the milk to 25–30°C.

3. Combine part of the flour with the eggs, wine and spices into a dough.

4. Mix in the sugared milk.

5. Add the remaining flour and butter, and knead until smooth.

6. Work in the yeast and let the dough rise until doubled.

7. Shape the dough into small, thick rings on buttered parchment.

8. Let rise again until springy.

9. Bake at about 175°C until the internal temperature reaches 99–100°C.

The original author notes the rings keep well when hung to dry in a warm room — and the same dough can also be used to make small rusks.

18th-century food culture lives on at Cafe Qwensel

Cafe Qwensel's own menu includes treats that echo this same era. The coffee itself can be enjoyed poured from the house's old copper coffee pot, out of gold-rimmed, rose-patterned cups, and the café's original old style wallpaper and period-appropriate furniture bring the spirit of the 1700s to life even today.

Be sure to also visit the Pharmacy Museum's guided tour if you enjoy a breath of history and want to hear more about 18th-century life!

Sources:

– Hotel and Restaurant Museum: Gustavian-era dinners

– Hotel and Restaurant Museum: Coffee in Finland

– Jälkipeli.net: Sugar production in Turku

– bakverk.ifokus.se: Recipe from Cajsa Warg's cookbook