Swedish cooking terms in English: msk, tsk, krm, dl and more

Got a Swedish recipe in front of you? The first thing you'll trip over is the measures. After that, it's the ingredients. Half of them don't have a neat English name.

Here's a quick guide to both.

The measures are simple once you know them. Swedish recipes use spoons and deciliters, and they're all metric.

Swedish	Short for	Amount	In other measures
krm	kryddmått	1 ml	a pinch, roughly
tsk	tesked	5 ml	1 teaspoon, or 5 krm
msk	matsked	15 ml	1 tablespoon, or 3 tsk
dl	deciliter	100 ml	about 6⅔ msk

So msk means tablespoon, and tsk means teaspoon. They match the US and UK spoons, so your own set will work fine. There's no cup to convert. If a recipe says 2 dl, that's 200 ml. A US cup is about 240 ml, so 2 dl is a little over ¾ cup.

Dry ingredients go by volume too. 3 dl of flour is a very normal thing to read. A measuring jug works, but weigh it if you want to be exact.

Swedish ingredients in English

Some of these have a direct translation. Others are worth a closer look, because the swap changes the dish.

Swedish	In English
Matlagningsgrädde	Cooking cream
Gräddfil	Sour cream, about 12 percent fat
Filmjölk	Mild cultured milk
Kvarg	Quark
Ättika	12 percent vinegar
Vaniljsocker	Vanilla sugar
Potatismjöl	Potato starch
Hjorthornssalt	Baker's ammonia
Mandelmassa	Almond paste
Pärlsocker	Pearl sugar
Ljus sirap	Light syrup
Mörk sirap	Dark syrup
Bittermandel	Bitter almond
Krondill	Dill gone to flower
Lingon	Lingonberries

Watch out for ättika. It's more than twice as strong as US white vinegar, so don't swap it one to one. Each glossary page has the details, and most tell you what to use outside Sweden.

Building something with Swedish recipes? We wrote about that too, in Recept-API på svenska.