Certain tastes define food; if they alter, the dish isn’t the same.

I refuse to make kanelbullar without pärlsocker. The distinct taste of cardamom paired with the sweet addition of hard bits of sugar is what makes a Swedish cinnamon roll a Swedish cinnamon roll. You can’t have one without the other.

And that’s why the food gods invented IKEA. Or so I like to think. What is picked up at the local grocery store in one place is a delicacy in another.

The pearl sugar and vanilla sugar are now carefully stashed in my pantry. Next to the cardamon.