Hello from New York! Each year at Christmas my family here celebrates our Swedish ancestry with a *julbord*. This year, I decided to contribute the dish “Jansson’s temptation,” which I’d only just learned about from a friend. While looking up the recipe, however, I found two totally incompatible stories of its origin.
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jansson%27s_temptation):
“It has often been associated with the opera singer Per Adolf “Pelle” Janzon (1844–1889), remembered as a gourmand. However, another claim for the origin of the name has been made by Gunnar Stigmark (1910–2001) in an article, ‘Så var det med Janssons frestelse’, which appeared in the periodical Gastronomisk kalender. According to Stigmark, the name was borrowed from the film Janssons frestelse (1928) featuring the film actor and director Edvin Adolphson; as a name for this dish, it was coined by Stigmark’s mother and her hired female chef for the particular occasion of a society dinner, whence it spread to other households and eventually into cookbooks.”
But according to [The New York Times](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/5707-janssons-temptation):
“Jansson’s Temptation was not created in Sweden at all, but in this country, Craig Claiborne found. The splendid dish, which is not unlike a casserole, is made with potatoes that have been cut into julienne strips and blended with anchovy fillets or sprats, plus cream and onions.
“As the story goes, it was named after a 19th-century Swedish religious leader, Erik Janson, who brought his followers from Sweden to America and founded a community called Bishop Hill in Illinois. Mr. Janson preached staunchly against the pleasures of the flesh and appetite but had a weakness — a particular potato-and-anchovy dish. He was discovered devouring the dish so ravenously that it ruined his reputation. Mr. Claiborne said the story is probably apocryphal (even the spelling of the name is different).”
I’m not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I was wondering if there is more information available in Swedish about this debate. Both sources are usually authoritative to me, so I’m not sure how to wrap my head around the disagreement! Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
(In any case, Bishop Hill in Illinois is a wonderful place to visit to learn about Swedish immigration to the Midwest. It’s right down the road from Kewanee, Illinois where my ancestors the Wallers settled!)
7 comments
Where are the sources that Craig Claiborne are referring to? How did he find out it was created in the US?
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It’s not a terribly complicated dish and similar recipes surely are available in many countries.
Much like meatballs that are literary everywhere, but with a local spin.
The Swedish folklore is that it was created or at least made famous in Sweden by opera singer Per Adolf Pelle Janzon (1844-1889)
Hi! A reminder not to misstanke anchovy for ansjovis.
The anchovy in Jansson is not made from the anchovy you have on pizza. Swedish anchovy (ansjovis) is a spiced pickled herring.
It is highly unlikely you will find the true origin, if one actually exists. As with most other dishes the Janssons frestelse we know today has likely evolved from other dishes similar to it but forgotten by now.
There is no definitive answer. But after looking around, the explanation related to the 1928 film seems to be the most credible. One source showed a picture of the presumably earliest known Janssons frestelse recipe from a 1932 newspaper.
It seems like the claim is a anecdote from a 1983 article, without any further sources cited.
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/06/garden/a-swedish-cook-who-brought-her-art-to-america.html
Who knows, it might be true! Either way you should also try “Toast Pelle Janzon” which is definitely named after Pelle Janzon (and also delicious) and unfortunately not as widely known as Janssons frestelse.
https://www.arcussweden.se/sv/matrecept/toast-pelle-janzon/
(Recipe in swedish)