Swedish

Have creamed spinach and sautéed carrots with these updated Swedish meat loaves. Then serve applesauce and spice cookies.

A traditional side dish for the Christmas ham, sausage or spareribs.

A winner in the Bon Appétit Recipes Sweepstakes, a reader poll conducted in honor of our 50th anniversary.

Limpa—a moist rye bread from Sweden—is often flavored with aniseed (or fennel), caraway seeds, and orange zest. These same ingredients also come together to produce the following fragrant muffins. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Braised carrots, a cucumber salad, and some steamed new potatoes sprinkled with chopped fresh dill are good choices to accompany this Swedish-inspired dish. Holiday cookies and mugs of hot apple cider make a happy ending.

To roll out this dough you will need a pastry cloth and a rolling-pin cover, which are available at kitchenware stores and by mail order from Bridge Kitchenware, tel. (800) 274-3435 or (212) 838-1901.

Almond paste in the shortcake biscuits and fresh berries glazed with red currant preserves give this dessert a Swedish accent.

One bread that Swedish settlers brought to the heartland was limpa; these twists are a nice twist on that classic.

In Sweden various combinations of matjes herring — a type of herring cured in a spiced sweet-and-sour brine — are eaten with the first tender white potatoes of the season. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Called limpa in Sweden, this impressive bread is flavored with a combination of molasses, orange peel, crushed aniseed, and caraway and fennel seeds.

(Swedish Rye Bread) A popular offering on the smorgasbords of Minnesota and Wisconsin, this bread has a clean-tasting combination of spice and sweetness that is characteristic of so much Scandinavian cooking.

This moist sweet corn bread is a nice addition to breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

A delicious treat from Aspa Herrgård. If you don't want to caramelize the top in brûlée style, just sift powdered sugar over the tart before serving.

The long cooking time makes this lamb meltingly tender. Offer noodles alongside.

The children of Jean Garry, wife of editor-in-chief William J. Garry, may have left home, but they come back at Christmas for their favorite bread. The recipe was given to Jean by her mother (who isn't Swedish, but never mind). The bread which is lightly flavored with aniseed and orange, makes great toast for stocking-searching time. Sometimes Jean bakes the loaves in nine-inch aluminum pie tins. After they cool, she puts the breads back into the tins and wraps them up in colorful cellophane for gift giving.