every food in: Pippi Longstocking (book 1)
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
Originally published 1945 (translation used is from 1950)
Pippi Longstocking, for those who are unfamiliar, is a book about Annika and Tommy befriending a girl named Pippi whose sea captain father abandoned her to live by herself with her pet horse and monkey. I’m not sure if it was the boomer nostalgia or if there was a resurgence of these books being popular, but EVERYONE was all about Pippi when I was growing up in the 90s. I remember one time for dress-up day in fourth grade or so, I used a coat hanger to bend my braids up into a Pippi-shape and four other girls had done the same thing. Bizarre, looking back on it, that we were all so excited about it.
When I was growing up, it never occurred to me that Pippi would’ve eaten any food different than what I was eating. Even as an adult who ironically speaks/reads a fair bit of Swedish, the translation was so relatively well done that I didn’t notice until I was drawing the below illustration and decided to look up what kind of pancakes she would have been making, and suddenly everything made more sense. Pippi, Annika, and Tommy are eating pankkakor, not American style flapjacks. Obvious, if you’re familiar with Swedish food, which I wasn’t. It’s a lot less bizarre for her to make one large pancake that they split for dinner, viewed in that light.
Because most of my readers are Americans, I’ve added as many links as I can for foods we experience less often here, or may be unfamiliar with. I plan to do the same going forward.
Finally, some more notes on the food in this book, and some of my choices on the links below..
I decided to have the children be eating cardamom or cinnamon buns, not saffron buns - the book seems to take place in warmer weather, mostly, so it seems unlikely they’d be having a Christmas seasonal food.
The cream pie seems to be a potential translation issue, unless Annika and Tommy’s mom was trying to make something fashionable and American/English. I think if she was, it would have been mentioned (will get more into this in #4) I think the closest guess is the strawberry cake with elderflower cream - it’s very nearly a cream pie, structurally. If anyone else has a better guess, please feel free to comment!
Pears were and are a cultural phenomenon. Pear cider, pear candy, pear cream mixes, pear jelly. I didn’t realize until relatively late in life, having grown up with a somewhat disappointing and mealy pear tree in my yard, that people outside the Midwest have strong positive feelings about pears. No wonder the kids are so thrilled to have a pear tree right within reach - pears are to Annika and Michael what gooseberries are to Enid Blyton books.
The Problem of the Pineapple Pudding. Hooooo boy. I went down a multiple hour rabbit hole for this, and I didn’t expect to need to do that. I’m aware I’m not the only book food blog who’s covered Pippi Longstocking, and there have been a few write-ups from people trying to guess what, exactly, the pineapple pudding is made of. 36 Eggs, whose work I love, had a Swedish reader suggest that it might be either ananasfromage or a baked fruit pudding. I have a few issues with this. Firstly, 36 Eggs checked out mostly modern cookbooks, or at least ones published post 1970. Food industrialization was at a way different point in 1945 rural Sweden than it was in 1970s Stockholm. Secondly, ananasfromage is listed as being a popular 1960s recipe in every article I can find. It’s not that they couldn’t have made it in 1945, it just seems… a little more unlikely, especially because it’s usually a larger molded dessert and the children eat “three pineapple puddings”. Annika’s mom might try to do something fashionable and impressive like a full molded aspic, but Pippi seems unlikely to bother. The next issue is that pudding might be a mistranslation entirely, ie British vs American English “pudding” vs “dessert”. Matilda Haraldsson, who clearly speaks much more fluent Swedish than I do, has written a paper that comments on the translation we all grew up with and refers to it as using outdated language. Hmmm. So it was seeming unlikely that it was a literal custard pudding - but is it actually made of pineapple? According to the 1926 Yearbook of Agriculture, Sweden was already one of the world’s top importers of tinned pineapple by 1926, and pineapple is still such a popular flavor that Swedish Fish and Dala Horses come in pineapple, which is listed alongside pear as one of the four “original flavors”. So finally, after checking a lot of English language Swedish cookbooks from prior to 1950, I found a few options that could work - pineapple ices and frappe would be called that, but pineapple savarin and pineapple fritters were well within the possibility of a “pudding.” I eventually decided to go with pineapple fritters because Pippi learned to cook “from the ship’s cook” when sailing with her father, and a ship’s cook having the ability to do a savarin seems….. unlikely at best. Much more likely that he’d fry up some tinned pineapple fritters for dessert, and so might Pippi, who’s demonstrably very excited to fry things whenever possible. WHEW.
Hot chocolate
Coffee and pepparkakor
Pears
Coffee with milk and sugar, and buns (likely kardamummabullar or kanellbullar)
A rosy colored mushroom (probably karljohan)
“good sandwiches with meatballs and ham, a whole pile of sugared pancakes, several little brown sausages, and three pineapple puddings”
Bread and cheese and butter, ham and cold roast and milk
Coffee, a plate of cakes, a large cream pie decorated with a red candy
Fruit juice and buns
Oddly shaped cakes and buns, and hot cocoa with whipped cream
