Traditional food of Latvia: 12 dishes to know

Latvian food is built on dark rye bread, pork and bacon, potatoes, peas, cabbage, Baltic fish and plenty of dairy, seasoned with caraway, dill and black pepper and shaped by the seasons. The most emblematic dishes are grey peas with bacon, the Christmas plate, pīrāgi, bacon-filled buns, sklandrausis, a rye tart of potato and carrot, and rupjmaize, rye bread.

Updated 2026-10-124 min read

What Latvian food is built on

Latvian cooking comes from peasant farms and fishing villages. Until the 20th century the diet rested on home-baked coarse rye bread and boiled dishes of grain, peas and beans, root vegetables and cabbage, with milk, meat or fat added, and mushrooms and berries gathered in the forest. Rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, peas, beets, cabbage, pork and potatoes are still the staples. Meat appears in most main dishes and fish is common, especially on the Baltic coast, and both hot- and cold-smoked meat and fish are everywhere.

Seasoning is simple: caraway, black pepper and allspice, and fresh herbs, especially dill. Every season has its own dishes, from birch sap in spring to mushrooms in autumn. Neighbouring cultures left their mark too: German influence shows in stewed sauerkraut and pork cutlets, and the Soviet period brought pelmeni, borscht and dressed herring. Beer is the most popular drink, kefir and soured milk are drunk with hot meals, and the national liquor is Riga Black Balsam, a herbal liqueur first made by a Riga apothecary in 1752.

Rye bread and pastries

Bread is the foundation of Latvian cuisine, and several of its best-known dishes are baked:

• Rupjmaize — Dark rye bread made from coarse rye flour, malt and caraway seeds, traditionally baked in a wood-fired oven. It has been a staple for centuries and is part of the Latvian Culture Canon; white bread, by contrast, was once eaten only on festive days. Another favourite is saldskābmaize, a sweet-and-sour bread of finely ground rye flour and caraway, and fried rye bread with garlic is a common starter in bars.
• Pīrāgi — Crescent buns of slightly sweet yeast dough filled with diced smoked bacon and onion, also called speķrauši. The bacon renders inside the dough as they bake. They are served at the winter solstice and at Jāņi, the summer solstice festival.
• Sklandrausis — An open tart of unleavened rye dough from Kurzeme, of Livonian origin, filled with a layer of salted mashed potato under a layer of sweetened carrot seasoned with caraway. In 2013 it became Latvia's first product registered by the EU as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed.
• Kliņģeris — A large sweet pretzel-shaped loaf with dried fruit and spices, served as a dessert on special occasions such as name days and birthdays.

Peas, potatoes and fish

The main meal is usually lunch, and these are dishes Latvians grow up with:

• Grey peas with bacon — Pelēkie zirņi ar speķi: large dried grey peas boiled until just tender, then tossed with fried fatty bacon and onion and eaten with a glass of kefir. It is the traditional Christmas dish, and Latvian large grey peas have been an EU protected geographical indication since 2015.
• Potatoes with herring and cottage cheese — The classic plain lunch: boiled potatoes with lightly salted herring, cottage cheese, biezpiens, spring onions and sour cream. Herring has been central for a long time: farm households once bought it by the barrel at the market and ate two or three barrels a year.
• Kartupeļu pankūkas — Potato pancakes, fried and served with sour cream, and in a popular version with smoked salmon. Thin and stuffed pancakes are also standard home cooking, served at the farm cafés that open to visitors each summer.

Soups for every season

Soups are made with vegetables and broth or with kefir, and two follow the calendar:

• Aukstā zupa — Cold beet soup of kefir or soured milk with boiled beetroot, chopped radish, fresh cucumber, boiled eggs and fresh herbs. It is served chilled in spring and summer.
• Skābeņu zupa — Sorrel soup, the spring soup, made with sour sorrel leaves and served with a boiled egg.

Dairy and desserts

Latvians eat a wide range of dairy products: cottage cheese, sour cream, soured milk and fresh and dried cheeses, often flavoured with seeds or herbs.

• Jāņu siers — A fresh sour milk cheese, usually with caraway seeds, made for Jāņi, the midsummer festival, where every household has its own recipe. It is considered a symbol of Latvian culture and has been on the EU Traditional Speciality Guaranteed register since 2015.
• Biezpiena sieriņš — The curd snack: a small bar of sweetened cottage cheese coated in chocolate. In 2012 the Kārums brand was voted Latvian consumers' favourite product, with 20% of the votes.
• Maizes zupa — Rye bread soup, a traditional dessert of rye bread cooked with dried fruit and cranberries and served with whipped cream.

Regions and seasons

Kurzeme, in the west, is the home of sklandrausis, and the town of Dundaga has held a sklandrausis festival since 2013. Its coast is known for dried herring and flounder, and in Rucava a lean white butter with about 40% fat has been made since the early 20th century, protected as an EU designation of origin since 2018. In Latgale, in the east, home cooks serve fish soups from local lakes. The calendar matters as much as the map: birch sap is tapped and sold at roadside stalls every spring, wild mushrooms are picked in summer and autumn and cooked into a cream and onion sauce for boiled potatoes, and Jāņi, the midsummer festival, brings caraway cheese and pīrāgi.

Cook Latvian food at home

Grey peas with bacon is the usual answer to the question of the national dish of Latvia, with sklandrausis as the other candidate. Latvian cooking belongs to Eastern European cuisine: compare it with the traditional food of Estonia and the traditional food of Lithuania, its Baltic neighbours.

Grey peas with bacon, pīrāgi and sklandrausis each have a full recipe, with quantities and step-by-step methods, in the Copper app. You will find them on our page dedicated to Latvian recipes.

The recipes

• Grey peas and ham🇱🇻 Latvia · 13 hours and 20 minutes
• Piragi🇱🇻 Latvia · 3 hours and 5 minutes
• Sklandrausis🇱🇻 Latvia · 2 hours and 20 minutes

Questions people ask

Keep reading

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• Traditional food of Lithuania: 13 dishes to know

Sources

1. Latvian cuisine — Wikipedia
2. Latviešu virtuve — Vikipēdija (Latvian)
3. Latvian national cuisine — Latvia Travel
4. Sklandrausis — Wikipedia
5. Grey peas — Wikipedia

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