Text: A Recipe (Imperatives and Passive)

Finnish recipes speak in one of two voices, and good cooks switch between them without thinking. The first is the 2nd-person singular imperative — Sekoita, Lisää, Paista ("Stir, Add, Fry") — a direct instruction to you, the reader. The second is the impersonal passive — Sekoitetaan, Lisätään ("One stirs, one adds") — softer, more collective, the voice of TV chefs and older cookbooks. Both are worth learning, because a real recipe often drifts between them. Along the way you will see the object case at work: ingredients that are measured amounts appear as mass partitives (maitoa, jauhoja), but once you are told to add the whole lot, the object becomes a total object in the nominative (Lisää muna, not Lisää munan). Read the recipe below, then work through each step in both voices.

The recipe

Ohukaiset (noin neljälle) 5 dl maitoa 2 munaa 2,5 dl vehnäjauhoja 1 tl sokeria ripaus suolaa voita paistamiseen

Riko munat kulhoon ja lisää joukkoon maito. Sekoita joukkoon jauhot, sokeri ja suola. Vatkaa taikina tasaiseksi ja anna sen turvota noin viisitoista minuuttia. Kuumenna paistinpannu ja sulata siihen nokare voita. Kaada pannulle ohut kerros taikinaa ja paista lettuja molemmin puolin, kunnes ne ovat kullanruskeita. Tarjoile lätyt hillon ja kermavaahdon kanssa.

Grammar in action

The ingredient list — 5 dl maitoa · 2 munaa · 2,5 dl vehnäjauhoja · 1 tl sokeria · ripaus suolaa

• Every measured ingredient sits in the partitive, because a quantity of a substance is a partial amount of an uncountable (or open) whole: maito → maitoa ("(some) milk"), jauhot → jauhoja ("(some) flour"), sokeri → sokeria, suola → suolaa. See mass nouns in the partitive.
• After a measure or a number, the counted noun also goes partitive singular: 5 dl maitoa, 2 munaa (not 2 munat), 1 tl sokeria. Note the Finnish decimal comma in 2,5 dl. See measures and quantities.
• voita paistamiseen — "butter for frying": voita partitive, paistamiseen the illative of the verbal noun paistaminen ("frying"), i.e. "for the frying".

Step 1: Riko munat kulhoon ja lisää joukkoon maito.

• Riko — "break", the imperative singular of rikkoa (note the weak grade: rikkoa → riko). lisää — "add", the imperative of lisätä. See the singular imperative.
• munat — "the eggs", a total object. Under a command, the total object drops into the plain nominative: all the eggs, so munat (nominative plural), never munien. maito — "the milk", likewise a total object in the nominative singular: lisää maito, "add the (whole) milk". See objects under the imperative and passive.
• Notice the contrast with the ingredient list: there the milk was maitoa (partitive, an unspecified amount), here it is maito (nominative, the whole measured lot you now tip in).
• kulhoon — "into a bowl", illative; joukkoon — "into the mix", illative.

Step 2: Sekoita joukkoon jauhot, sokeri ja suola.

• Sekoita — "stir in", imperative of sekoittaa. The three objects — jauhot (nominative plural), sokeri, suola (nominative singular) — are all total objects: you add the whole measured amount of each, so all appear in the nominative.
• Here again the flip is visible: the ingredient list had jauhoja, sokeria, suolaa (partitive amounts), but the instruction to add all of them yields jauhot, sokeri, suola (total, nominative).

The same step in the passive voice: Sekoitetaan joukkoon jauhot, sokeri ja suola.

• Sekoitetaan — "one stirs / we stir in", the impersonal passive of sekoittaa. The objects are identical (jauhot, sokeri, suola, nominative): the passive follows exactly the same object rule as the imperative. See the passive present.
• This is the "chef on TV" voice: Lisätään, sekoitetaan, paistetaan — a whole recipe can be written this way, and many are.

Step 3: Vatkaa taikina tasaiseksi ja anna sen turvota noin viisitoista minuuttia.

• Vatkaa — "whisk", imperative of vatkata; taikina — "the batter", total object in the nominative.
• tasaiseksi — "until smooth", the translative of result — you whisk it into a smooth state.
• anna sen turvota — "let it rest/swell": antaa
  • genitive subject sen
    • the infinitive turvota. noin viisitoista minuuttia — "about fifteen minutes", the duration in the partitive after the number.

Step 4: Kuumenna paistinpannu ja sulata siihen nokare voita.

• Kuumenna — "heat up", imperative of kuumentaa (weak grade nt → nn); paistinpannu — "the frying pan", total object in the nominative.
• sulata siihen nokare voita — "melt a knob of butter in it": sulata imperative of sulattaa, siihen illative ("into it"), nokare voita — "a knob of butter", with voita back in the partitive (an unmeasured amount of a substance).

Step 5: Kaada pannulle ohut kerros taikinaa ja paista lettuja molemmin puolin, kunnes ne ovat kullanruskeita.

• Kaada pannulle — "pour onto the pan": imperative of kaataa (t → d), pannulle allative ("onto the pan"). ohut kerros taikinaa — "a thin layer of batter", with taikinaa partitive (a portion of the mass).
• paista lettuja — "fry pancakes". Here the object is partitive, not total: you fry pancakes as an ongoing activity, batch after batch, no fixed complete lot in view — so lettuja, not letut. This is the one step where the command takes a partitive object, and it shows the aspect logic still applies under the imperative.
• kunnes ne ovat kullanruskeita — "until they are golden brown", with the predicate adjective in the partitive plural.

Step 6: Tarjoile lätyt hillon ja kermavaahdon kanssa.

• Tarjoile — "serve", imperative of tarjoilla; lätyt — "the pancakes", a total object in the nominative plural: serve the whole lot.
• hillon ja kermavaahdon kanssa — "with jam and whipped cream", genitive + the postposition kanssa.

Cultural note

Home baking (kotileipominen) is a living tradition in Finland, and it is normal for a single recipe — handwritten, or on a well-worn cookbook page — to mix the two voices freely, imperative for some steps, passive for others. The archetypal bake is the korvapuusti, the cardamom cinnamon roll whose name literally means "a slap on the ear" (from its pinched, folded shape); thin ohukaiset or lätyt like these are the everyday, weeknight end of the same baking culture. Whichever voice a recipe uses, the object rules above stay identical — that is the one thing not to let slip.

Key takeaways