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As we hurry through the sleety winter darkness, a shimmer of soft candlelight spills out through the lace curtains of the Engebret Café, the glow already hinting at the cozy pleasures to be found within its wooden walls. It is my first Christmas in Oslo and my students, propelling me across the cobbled square, are determined to make an honorary Norwegian of me. It is time to initiate me into the mysteries of that quintessential Norwegian yuletide dish, lutefisk.

Norwegians wax rhapsodic at the mere mention of "lye fish." They love the stuff and therefore, my friends believe, so should I. But non-Norwegians have warned me that the very smell of lutefisk is up there alongside skunk in the "once sniffed, never forgotten" category. I have been subjected to all manner of horror stories. Lutefisk, I have been told, is a wobbly, gelatinous mass, deliberately grey and unappetizingly translucent, served with ladles of liquid bacon fat and bearable only after downing several lip-numbing shots of aquavit.

Norwegians are generally a practical lot, so where did this bizarre concoction originate? One story is that, centuries ago, a poor farmer lost his barn to a raging fire. His entire winter's stock of carefully dried fish had been in the barn, and he knew he could not survive the cold months without it. The boxes of fish were eventually found, covered in ash from the fire, so the farmer rinsed the ash away with water. Now, as any chemist would point out, wood ash plus water equals caustic soda, or lye, and this solution both reconstituted and cured the fish. Cured it of what, I wonder rebelliously. In any case, the farmer must have survived his first season of lutefisk in order for this new and seemingly toxic national dish to be born.

The Engebret Café has been carefully chosen for my initiation. It has a reputation for Oslo's finest lutefisk, however one might establish hierarchy in the case of chemically engineered cod. Tucked away in the historic Quadratura area, hunkered in the shadow of the Akershus fortress, the café has been providing simple comforts and a homely ambience since 1857. Back then, this was the city's most fashionable area, awash with bohemian life - composer Edvard Grieg and writer Henrik Ibsen were among the café's regulars. I comfort myself with the thought that they both survived the dubious delights of lutefisk and were still able to produce great works of art. Perhaps I will, too. Survive, that is.

Norway is not the only nation with scary cuisine: think frogs' legs, fugu or crispy-fried tarantulas. For the sake of student-teacher relations, I have to make this look good. As the evening draws on, I notice that the quiet buzz of conversation rises in pitch in direct correlation to the number of trays of aquavit that have headed past, deftly manoeuvred by white-pinafored staff. People tuck into that other festive Norwegian delight: whole boiled lamb's head (start on the ears and leave the tongue for last). Fish suddenly looks like a good choice.

The large slab of cod looks suspiciously normal as it is placed before me.

Only as I cut into it do I discover its raw look, but it has no wobbly Jell-O tendencies whatsoever. It is also surprisingly bland in taste, which is presumably why it is always served with bacon, salty and swimming in its own fat, along with what the British would call "mushy peas" - dried peas, boiled up and mashed to a purée. An abundance of plain boiled potatoes rounds out the meal, and the ever-present aquavit offsets the greasiness of the bacon fat.

Perhaps the alcohol helps, but my baptism by lutefisk is a pleasant surprise, not that anyone should subject their arteries to it more than once a year. It won't replace turkey as my Christmas favourite, but when the time comes to head back into the dreary December night, I know I have passed a test. I can now wear my traditional Norwegian sweater with a clear conscience, place a big wooden troll by my front door and start my Hardanger needlepoint. And I can also start spreading my own lutefisk tales.