Cajsa Warg

Who was Cajsa Warg?

Anna Christina Warg, better known as Cajsa or Kajsa Warg, was a Swedish cookbook author, who is today among the most well-known cooks in Swedish history.

Warg was born in Örebro as the youngest of two daughters to accountant Anders Warg and Karin Livijn. In 1710, her mother married the noble Eric Rosenstråle, with whom she had additionally seven children, and moved with him to Borggård Manor outside Finspång. Warg left home early to be the cook and house keeper of several powerful people in Stockholm, such as the general count Wolter Reinhold von Stackelberg. It is not known when she started her career, but von Stackelberg had previously served with her father as an officer in the army, and it is considered likely that she was employed by him as his cook by the time he married and settled in the capital of Stockholm in 1735. She was later employed by von Stackelberg's older brother marshal Baron Berndt Otto von Stackelberg, and from the late 1740s, by the state secretary and general post master Baron Leonard Klinckowström, whose wife Catharina Ehrenpreus was the cousin of her mother. von Stackelberg was the brother-in-law of Hedvig Taube, and the ability of Warg had a good opportunity to become known in influential circles. He was described as a great gourmet, and hosted many receptions for the capital's cultural elite, who praised the cookery art there: one of them was Carl Michael Bellman, who wrote a poem about the food there, though he did not mentioned Cajsa Warg by name. After the death of her last employer Klinckowström in 1759, she acquired his apartment, where she lived on her royalties and by renting out rooms.