How to pronounce Lefse

In the International Phonetic Alphabet it is /ˈlɛ́fsə̌/. In plain English letters that is LEF-seh, with the stress on the syllable in capitals. There is no recording by a native speaker yet, so use the spelling and the IPA.

What is Lefse?

Lefse is a bread or pastry of Norway. People usually eat it as a snack and at lunch or dinner. Its main ingredients are potato and wheat & flour. It tastes sweet and savory.

Where Lefse comes from

Lefse is one of 20 signature dishes of Norway on this map.

• Fenalår · Snack · Norway

  Fenalår is salted and dried leg of lamb or mutton, a cured meat Norwegian sources call typically Norwegian: many countries cure ham, but curing sheep's leg is distinctively Norwegian, and the name has European protection.

• Rømmegrøt · Dessert · Norway

  Rømmegrøt is a Norwegian porridge made with sour cream, whole milk, wheat flour, butter and salt; rømme means sour cream and grøt porridge.

• Krumkake · Dessert · Norway

  Krumkake, 'curved cake', is a thin Norwegian biscuit of flour, butter, eggs and sugar, baked on a decorative two-sided iron that resembles a waffle iron but makes cakes only about 1.5 millimetres thick.

• Fårikål · Main dish · Eastern Norway

  Fårikål means "sheep in cabbage": pieces of mutton or lamb on the bone, layered in a pot with wedges of cabbage and whole black peppercorns, then simmered for hours.

• Lutefisk · Main dish · Western coast

  Lutefisk is dried cod, or sometimes ling, soaked for days in water, then in a lye solution, and then in clean water again.

• Brunost · Snack · Gudbrandsdalen

  Brunost, "brown cheese", is not quite a cheese: it is made by boiling whey, the liquid left from cheesemaking, with milk or cream until the sugars caramelise into a brown, firm paste with a sweet, fudge-like taste.

Food of Norway

Dishes like Lefse in other countries

Same type of dish and similar main ingredients as Lefse:

• Moskole · Bread & pastry · Podhale (Lesser Poland), Poland

  Moskole are flat cakes of the highlanders of the northern Western Carpathians, known by this name mainly in the Żywiec area, Orawa, Podhale and Spisz.

• Shanga шаньга · Bread & pastry · Russian North and Urals, Russia

  Shanga is an open round bun of the Russian North and the Urals, also part of Komi, Mari and Udmurt cooking.

• Focaccia barese · Bread & pastry · Bari, Italy

  Focaccia barese is a thick, soft flatbread from Bari made with a dough that includes boiled potato, baked in a round pan with plenty of olive oil and topped with cherry tomatoes, black olives, oregano and salt.

• Tunnbröd · Bread & pastry · Norrland, Sweden

  Tunnbröd, 'thin bread', is Sweden's own flatbread and is linked above all with the food traditions of Norrland.