Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Surströmming: The World's Smelliest Food

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

There are many foods that are considered an acquired taste. Foods that might not be very palatable the first time you try it, or something that just doesn’t sit right with most people. It could be something as simple as blue cheese, or something like the Filipino delicacy, balut, which is a boiled, fertilized egg with the embryo still inside. Sweden has its own acquired taste delicacy which has spawned hundreds of reaction videos as people and caused it to be banned by airlines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are many foods that are considered an acquired taste, foods that might not be palatable the first time you try it, or something that just doesn't sit right with most people. It could be something as simple as blue cheese, or something like the Filipino delicacy, Balut, which is a boiled, fertilized egg with the embryo still inside. Sweden has its own acquired taste delicacy, which has spawned hundreds of reaction videos and caused it to be banned by airlines. Learn more about Surstramming, the world's smelliest food, on this episode of Everything, everywhere daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by audible.com. My audiobook recommendation today is

The Almost Nearly Perfect People, behind the myth of the Scandinavian Utopia by Michael Booth. Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than 10 years, and he has growing increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely audiobook, he leaves his adoptive home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and most intriguing of all, what they think of each other. are the Danes so happy despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? You can get a free one-month trial to Audible and two free audiobooks by going to audibletrial.com slash everything everywhere or by clicking on the link in the show notes. The word surstroming in Swedish literally means sour fish. And that is probably an understatement.

More specifically, surstroming is canned, fermented herring. That in and of itself doesn't sound that bad. There are many fermented foods that we eat and we have no problem with them. Yogurt, sauerkraut and kimchi are all fermented foods and no one freaks out at the idea of eating them. Fermentation is an ancient form of food preparation by the breakdown of food via microorganisms like bacteria and yeast. All well and good.

However, there's another process of breakdown of food via microorganisms and that is called rotting. Sir Straming toes the line between fermentation and rotting. The history of Sirstroming goes back to at least the 16th century when we can find the first written mention of the food. However, the food might be very well older than that as fermentation is a pretty old process.

The legend of Sirstroming holds that it was accidentally created by fishermen who didn't have enough salt to preserve their catch. They used less salt than normal and sold their fish to some locals in Finland. salt is used to inhibit microbial growth and to stop the fish from rotting. When the fishermen returned, they thought the locals would be mad at them for selling them fish that rotted. Instead, they loved the product and wanted more of it. The fishermen tried the fish themselves, and thus, Sir Straming was born. Today, Sir Straming is prepared and purchased in a can.

While in the can, the fermentation process continues. Fermentation results in the release of gases, which means that the can will often be bulging due to high pressure inside the can. The fermentation of the fish in the can results in the single most unique quality of surstroming. The smell. In 2002, a Japanese study found it to be the worst smelling food in the world. The smell is so bad that it has become legendary. It's been described as rotten eggs, a dead body, a dirty diaper, and raw sewage. But the truth is, there are so few things you can really compare it to because nothing else smells quite so bad. The smell is, the smell. The smell is, is what's made the product famous, and if it weren't for the horrid smell, it would be about

as controversial as pickled herring. Children in Sweden have been known to open a can of surstroming in school so they could get out of class. Airlines will not allow people to carry surstroming on flights. Because of the high pressure in the can and the low pressure in the cabin, the higher pressure differential can result in some cans rupturing, spewing the smelly liquid onto the plane, and it isn't as if you can leave a plane while it's flying or open a window. Most famously, in 1981, a landlord in Germany evicted a tenant because they spilled a can of Sir Struming in the building's stairwell. German laws make it very hard to evict people. When the eviction came to trial, the landlord's defense consisted of opening up a can in the courtroom.

The judge, having experienced the overwhelming odor, ruled in favor of the landlord. If you do a search for a surstroming online, you'll find dozens and dozens of reaction videos of people opening up the cans and trying to eat the contents. The videos mainly consist of gagging, retching, and sometimes vomiting. The problem, according to the surstroming experts, is that they're eating it wrong. For starters, you never want to open a can of surstroming indoors, for reasons which I think I've established by now. Ideally, you want to open the can when submerged in water. That will prevent the liquid inside from spraying all over the place when it's opened.

Alternatively, you could open it while it's enclosed in a plastic bag. Once the liquid has been drained, you don't eat it straight from the can. The herring, which is put in the can, hasn't been gutted or deboned. You need to do that first. Then the traditional way of eating it is with a Swedish flatbread called Tunbrod, along with potatoes, onions, and sour cream. It's usually eaten as a sort of small sandwich. I've actually had the experience of trying some surstroming,

and it really doesn't taste as bad as it smells. Granted, given that it's the worst smelling food in the world, that's a pretty low bar, but it isn't bad so long as it's prepared properly. If you really want the full surstrumbing experience, I'd have to suggest you visit the island of Ulvan in Sweden's high coast. It is a center of herring fishing, and it's considered the mecca for surstroming. August is considered the best season for surstrumbing, and because it's in the middle of summer, it's also one of the best times to visit Ulvan, regardless.

The main day for eating it is the third Thursday of August, also known as surstroming Day, which is the day which by royal decree you used to be able to start selling that year's surstroming. If you're there, you might be able to meet Ruben Madsen, who is the self-proclaimed king of surstroming. He was the person who actually served me my first surströming when I visited Ulvan. Back in 2014, he was involved in opening a 25-year-old can of surströming, which was found in an abandoned cabin in Norway. Having been outside for a quarter century, the can was quite rusted, and due to 25 years of fermentation, it was bulging. A lot. The contents of the container were mostly liquid. What solid material that did come out didn't really look anything like fish. Ruben Mattson, of course, ate it

anyhow. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. I've had several people reach out to me on Instagram because they didn't know how to reach me via email. If you'd like to send me an email, you can reach me at Gary at Everything If you have a show suggestion or a question you'd like me to answer in an episode, feel free to drop me a line.