Vegetarian recipes from Denmark

Meatless Danish cooking reads from three elements: rye, potato and butter. Dense rye bread, rugbrod, is not a side but the support of the midday meal; butter replaces oil in almost all cooking, and thick cream serves savoury and sweet alike. The seasonings are few and recurrent: dill, chives, mustard, caraway, and above all the vinegar of pickled vegetables, beetroot and cucumber, which supplies the acidity that fresh herbs give elsewhere. This shows on vegetarian smorrebrod, assembled in a single layer on a buttered slice.

The meal is structured by season and by preservation: roots and cabbage in winter, red berries in summer, turned at once into compotes and jellies. Sugar does not only close the meal, it runs through the savoury, as in caramelised potatoes, small potatoes rolled in a butter and sugar caramel and served with festive dishes. Desserts follow the same economy, from the reuse of breadcrumbs and apple in aeblekage to the thickened redcurrant purée of rodgrod med flode, poured over with cold cream. Coffee and a slice of cake also punctuate the day, outside meals, using the same basic ingredients.