Pitepalt

I don’t know what happened to the divine Mrs Tilton. But this is in her spirit, for she used to post subtle recipes for incredibly calorific German food and, while looking for things to say about the Swedish elections, I found a recipe for Pitepalt, a cross between a dumpling and a depth charge:

• Mix minced pork or beef with a little onion and salt and form into substantial meatballs, one for each dumpling.
• Shred ten potatoes and drain them. Mix with flour and a little salt till you have a dough.
• Take a lump of potato dough the size of a tennis ball; flatten it out, and then wrap it round a meatball to make a larger sphere, perhaps the size of the lump of uranium in an atom bomb.
• Lower these into a pan of boiling water and leave for an hour.

Serve with melted butter and sharp fruit jelly, ideally lingon.

This dish has given its name to a medical condition, Paltkoma, which is the state of reduced consciousness consequent on consumption. I would imagine that a small digestif might be helpful then: no more than half a bottle of aquavit.