Thea Applebaum Licht at Cabinet Magazine:
Though the smorgasbord did not begin in the United States, its reputation has likely been shaped more by its path through American culture than by its Scandinavian roots. Take, for example, The Smörgåsbord Cookbook (1949), whose American author, Anna Olsson Coombs, so deeply assumes excess as a starting point that she concocts a dubious Nordic culinary history. The smorgasbord, she writes, “is but a feeble although refined outgrowth of the pagan feasts among the Vikings. … The accent then was definitely on quantity, as those primitive gourmands cared little about the embellishment of the table or elegance in manner.”3
Coombs invokes a primordial era “happily oblivious of balance in diet and nutritive requirements” and blissfully ignorant of the Epicurean ideal of moderation.4 In the smorgasbord, she sees the paradigmatic feast, “refined.” Not merely gluttony, but the “ancient flair for plenty” combined with “the French propensity for variety.”5 In the mid-century American imagination, the smorgasbord recalled a venerable tradition of indulgence.
more here.
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