Surstromming - the world's nastiest food...?
Swedes - lovely people, gave us ABBA, Britt Ekland and Sven Goran Eriksson, but heavens, they have strange tastes. You only need to visit Sweden at the moment to discover this.
From late August to the end of September, the surstromming season is in full flow. It would be comforting to tell you that surstromming is a lightly-flavoured potato and chicken stew, but, well, it isn't. It is, in fact, herring that has intentionally been allowed to rot so much that it is illegal to eat it in apartment blocks.
Hundreds of tons of herring is caught in April, and placed in a brine just salty enough to stop the fish from decomposing so completely as to no longer exist. The rancid fish flesh is then stored in tins through the summer, until it is deemed sufficiently rotten, when it is joyfully guzzled at surstromming parties.
The stench is, apparently, at its worst when the can is just opened - so much so, that it is generally opened underwater, so the noxious gases and filthy oozing fish-goo is contained.
Nevertheless the stench, likened by visitors to that which emerges from a dogs bottom, is all-pervasive. The dish itself is best swallowed rapidly, without chewing, while tins are only allowed to be kept unopened for 18-months, after which they are liable to explode. Hmmmm. And you thought Spam was bad. (17 September 2001, AM)
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