[3] At the end of the 1940s, surströmming producers in Sweden lobbied for a royal ordinance (Swedish: förordning) that would prevent incompletely fermented fish from being sold.

The canning procedure, introduced in the 19th century, enabled the product to be marketed in shops and stored at home, whereas formerly the final stage would have been storage in large wooden barrels and smaller, one-litre kegs.

The salt raises the osmotic pressure of the brine above the zone where bacteria responsible for rotting can thrive and prevents decomposition of proteins into oligopeptides and amino acids.

[citation needed] The fermentation of the fish relies on a lactic acid enzyme in the spine that is activated if the conditions, temperature and brine concentration, are right.

[citation needed] Prior to the development of modern canning methods, surströmming was sold in wooden barrels for immediate consumption, as even the smaller kegs could leak.

[15] As of 2023[update], over the past few years, the supply of Baltic and other herring caught by Swedish fishermen has dramatically declined.

The pressurized can is usually opened some distance away from the dining table and is often initially punctured while immersed in a bucket of water, or after tapping and angling it upwards at 45 degrees, to prevent escaping gas from spraying brine.

Surströmming is often eaten with tunnbröd, either soft or a crispy type of flatbread made of different kind of flour, sometimes it also contains milk and bread spices.

[23] In the southern part of Sweden, it is customary to use a variety of condiments such as diced red onion, gräddfil (fat fermented sour cream similar to smetana) or crème fraîche, chives, and sometimes tomato and chopped dill.

German food critic and author Wolfgang Fassbender wrote that "the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite, as opposed to before".

[25] Due to being made from herring from the Baltic Sea, surströmming today contains higher levels of dioxins and PCBs than permitted in the EU.

[26][needs update] Since gaining notoriety as one of the world's smelliest foods (including being discussed on the BBC panel show QI), surströmming has become the focus of a number of "challenge" videos on YouTube and other platforms, where people uninitiated to the food perform opening a can for the first time, usually with initial reactions, and trying to eat the fish without preparation.

The videos have been criticized for not following normal preparation methods, which include opening the can outdoors and/or underwater, gutting the fish and removing the backbone, and serving with tunnbröd (a Swedish flatbread) and other accoutrements to make a surströmmingsklämma ("surströmming sandwich").

The court concluded that it "had convinced itself that the disgusting smell of the fish brine far exceeded the degree that fellow-tenants in the building could be expected to tolerate".

Lau visited the Home Affairs Department of Sha Tin District Office in person asking for a meeting with Chan.

[32] On 4 June 2005, the first surströmming museum in the world was opened in Skeppsmalen, 20 km (12 mi) south-east of Örnsköldsvik, a town at the northern end of the High Coast.