Hard Core Finnish Easter Dessert

Var har du fatt tag pa detta?

Ohh, memma! Fick det jämt hos min mormor (som var finsk) när vi var på besök. Inget man tar till sig direkt som vuxen kanske.

ps. om du gillar memma så dricker du väl sima också? Fantastiskt gott, och man kan laga det hemma.

Memma? Mitä se on?

It's called 'mämmi' in less civilized parts of the world.

Mämmi rules!

It is basically compact sour-dough rye bread and molasses. You have it at Easter, cold, with cream and sugar. It is a Finnish thing. It is very strange.

Hm. I've made something vaguely similar a few times. Looks like I had it with thicker cream, however. And I had no idea it was anything like a Finnish Easter food.

it's been too many years since i got to have that.

the wikipedia page has a couple recipes. hmm, i wonder if i could get hold of rye malt anywhere nearby...

Baby, I bought it at Hemköp on my way to Skepparstigen.

Janne, I haven't heard of sima before. Judging from recipes it should be pretty vile. But, I guess, "try everything once except incest and country dancing"...

Llew, you made memma and didn't know what it was? What exactly were you trying to make?!

N.N., maybe a beer hobbyist mail-order site can help?

Did see Gordon Ramsay taste this on one of his shows. He found it absolutely disgusting :D

I don't see why this would be even close to unappealing. Molasses are a bit of an acquired taste, but sourdough ryebread just sounds yummy.

Then again I like natto and enjoy buttermilk as an alternative to normal milk. Then again I might be a bit off the radar of normal in these things.

sima (mjöd) done right is yummy. it can be screwed up, of course, as any brewing process, but it's relatively foolproof and the result most worthwhile. it's a May Day thing where i grew up.

memma is a bit of an acquired taste, but as compared to stuff like natto, i refuse to believe it would be anywhere nearly as hard to acquire.

Sima seems similar to gotlandsdricka, whose quality varies dramatically from maker to maker.

Yes, sima/mjöd quality varies a lot from maker to maker, plus it goes bad relatively quickly. The varieties you can buy in shops usually taste little like the homebrew stuff.

A Finn to a foreigner: "It is traditional. It is not what you think it is. This is not some evil prank we pull on gullible out-of-towners. No sirree. Heh heh. Now I will watch you when you eat it. Pon appetititi."

certainly it is not any evil prank Finns pull on foreigners.

those all involve saunas.

Future wife's mother is from Finland, so we naturally eat memmi at easter. I actually became quite fond of it from the start. The key is not to anticipate a yummy sweet dessert when you're about to try it.

Memma is pretty tasty. It's also the highest-density substance in the known universe, so you're usually full after just a bite. Gotlandsdricku should be banned, btw.

My granny made sweet cornbread and crumbled it into milk for over 100 years. As far as I know, she's still doing it (age 104). Back when she was young and sugar wasn't available, they sometimes sweetened things with honey, molasses, or even sorghum. If she'd had a different type of bread such as sourdough rye, I imagine she'd have eaten memma but called it something else. She was born in Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma, by the way.

In one of Edith Nesbit's children's fantasy books, a group of sibs make a wish for the best meal in the world, and receive a bowl of bread boiled in milk. This, explains Nesbit, is not the tastiest of meals, but certainly the best.