Smorgasbord
collection of hot and cold dishes eaten during annual celebrations such as Christmas, Easter and Midsummer
Smorgasbord or Smörgåsbord (Swedish: [ˈsmœ̂rɡɔsˌbuːɖ] , lit. 'sandwich-table' or 'buttered-bread table') is a buffet-style meal of Swedish origin. It is served with various hot and mainly cold dishes. It assumed its present form in the 19th century, following old traditions.
Smörgåsbord became known in the US at the 1939 New York World's Fair when it was offered at the Swedish Pavilion's Three Crowns Restaurant. It is typically a celebratory meal, and guests can help themselves from a range of dishes laid out for their choice. In a restaurant the term refers to a buffet-style table laid out with many small dishes from which, for a fixed amount of money, one is allowed to choose as many as one wishes.
A traditional Swedish smörgåsbord consists of both hot and cold dishes. Bread, butter, and cheese are always part of the smörgåsbord. It is customary to begin with cold fish dishes, which are generally various forms of herring, salmon, and eel. After eating the first portion, people usually continue with the second course (other cold dishes), and round off with hot dishes.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Smorgasbord” as collection of hot and cold dishes eaten during annual celebrations such as Christmas, Easter and Midsummer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1070156. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Smorgasbord” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.