Gravlax

Gravlax

salt, sugar, dill/spruce

Cookbook: Gravlax   Media: Gravlax

Gravlax (Swedish:

, sliced thinly and accompanied by hovmästarsås (literally 'maitre d'hôtel sauce', also known in Sweden as gravlaxsås, in Norway as sennepssaus, literally 'mustard sauce', in Denmark as rævesovs, literally 'fox sauce', in Iceland as graflaxsósa, and in Finland as hovimestarinkastike, literally 'butler sauce'), dill and mustard sauce, either on bread or with boiled potatoes.

Etymology

The word gravlax comes from the Northern Germanic word gräva/grave ('to dig'; modern sense 'to cure (fish)') which goes back to the Proto-Germanic *grabą, *grabō ('hole in the ground; ditch, trench; grave') and the Indo-European root *ghrebh- 'to dig, to scratch, to scrape',^[3] and lax/laks, 'salmon'.

History

During the

it by burying it in the sand above the high-tide line.

Fermentation is no longer used in the production process. Instead the salmon is "buried" in a dry marinade of salt, sugar, and dill, and cured for between twelve hours and a few days. As the salmon cures, osmosis moves moisture out of the fish and into the salt and sugar, turning the dry mixture into a highly concentrated brine, which can be used in Scandinavian cooking as part of a sauce.^[4] This same method of curing can be employed for any fatty fish, but salmon is the most commonly used.

See also

References

External links

Look up gravlax in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on

• Gravlax

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gravad lax.