Life-Changing Cookbooks: Moomins Cookbook: An Introduction to Finnish Cuisine

The cover of Moomins Cookbook: An Introduction to Finnish Cuisine is bright magenta and blue, and features an image of the Moomins crushing apples into jam through an orange machine. Moominmamma, her eyes closed, is meditative; the others, wondrously surprised. Written by Sami Malila and filled with illustrations by Tove Jansson, the late creator of the Moomins, it would be unfair to deem the book’s title a misnomer—it is a primer on Finnish cuisine. There are recipes for a blackcurrant juice best made with berries from the forest, a “Herring for Stormy Weather,” and fish solyanka, simmered in tomato puree and served with sour cream. I live in Miami, where I can certainly make but would never find rhubarb kissel or intentionally soured milk.
Familiarizing the reader with Nordic food, however, isn’t the point (hence the countryless nougat milkshakes and “supper sandwiches”). The book’s intention, rather, is to pay homage to the Moomins, a family of round, hippopotamic creatures with soft voices and softer bellies. They first appeared in Jansson’s 1945 book The Moomins and the Great Flood, a precursor to what would become a massive franchise. Moomintroll, the protagonist, is a sweet boy who—like his family and friends—lives in harmony with the seasons. He hibernates in winter and eats pancakes with abandon, reveling in the simplicity of the countryside, sometimes navigating the tenuous space between home and very far. If the Moomins are adventurous sorts—and they are, often finding themselves on perilous seas or in the depths of the woods—it is less the excitement of travel than the warmth of returning home they like best.
And so it’s this—the comforts of living close to the land and closer to your friends—that the Moomins Cookbook is really about. It’s testament to the sincerity of the Moomins, of Jansson herself, that the book is never cloying, only straightforward: the “Cook’s Tips” suggests you “read through the recipe before going to the shop … what a terrible nuisance it is to have to run back to the shop…” A charmingly unnecessary recipe for tea ends, sweetly, “The best thing you can add to a cup of tea is whatever you like the most.” The book’s subtitle is “Everything fun is good for the stomach.”
My first exposure to the strange loveliness of their world was a 1990 Japanese-Finnish cartoon series, Moomin, the Moomins’ third anime adaptation. The show’s themes were equally cosmic (there’s an entire episode, “The Midwinter Bonfire,” about communing with ancestral spirits) and grounded—even Moominpappa suffers from writers’ block. They also love to eat and drink: tea, berries, milk, bread. In one episode, Moominmamma packs the kitchen for a boat trip, because traveling is always better with pancakes.