What do Danes eat in a day?
Danes eat a cold breakfast and a cold lunch of smørrebrød on rye bread, then a hot family dinner around 18:00, often pork with potatoes.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is cold and quick: rye bread (rugbrød) with cheese, oatmeal, or yogurt with muesli, and coffee. On weekends many families buy fresh rundstykker, crusty bread rolls, from the bakery along with wienerbrød, the pastry the rest of the world calls a Danish, about 380 kcal each.
Lunch
Lunch is eaten around 12:00 and is cold. Most people bring a madpakke, a packed lunch of rye bread with toppings, or eat in the work canteen. Smørrebrød, open sandwiches on buttered rye, about 300 kcal a piece, come with pickled herring, liver pâté, egg and shrimp or roast beef, and two or three make a lunch.
Dinner
Dinner is the one hot meal, eaten with the family around 18:00 to 18:30. Frikadeller, pan fried pork meatballs with potatoes and brown sauce, are a weekday classic. In 2014 Danes voted stegt flæsk, crisp fried pork belly with boiled potatoes and parsley sauce, the national dish with 44 percent of the vote. Flæskesteg, roast pork with crackling, is Christmas Eve dinner.
Starters
A starter is rare on a weekday. At a long lunch table, such as the julefrokost before Christmas, the order is fixed: pickled herring first, with a glass of snaps, then other fish such as shrimp and smoked salmon, then warm meat dishes, and cheese last. Rye bread comes with all of it.
Desserts
Risalamande is the Christmas dessert: rice pudding with whipped cream and chopped almonds, served cold with warm cherry sauce, and whoever finds the one whole almond wins a present. In summer it is koldskål, a cold buttermilk soup with small kammerjunker biscuits. Drømmekage, a sponge cake with a coconut and brown sugar top, is the homemade favourite.
Drinks
Coffee is drunk all day, at home, at work and with cake. Beer is mostly Danish lager such as Carlsberg and Tuborg, about 215 kcal for half a litre. Snaps, also called akvavit, is a strong spirit flavoured with caraway or dill, drunk from small glasses with herring. In December people drink gløgg, hot spiced wine with raisins and almonds.
Street food
The pølsevogn, a hot dog stand, is the classic snack. The rød pølse, a bright red sausage, comes in a bun with ketchup, mustard, remoulade, raw and crispy onions and sliced pickles, about 290 kcal. The fransk hot dog is a sausage pushed into a hollowed out roll. A flæskestegssandwich, roast pork and crackling in a bun, is the other favourite.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Pålægschokolade, thin slices of chocolate, go on buttered rye bread, and many Danes had it in their school lunch box. Butter spread that thick is called tandsmør, tooth butter, as your teeth leave marks in it. What English speakers call a Danish is wienerbrød, Vienna bread, since the pastry came from Austria. Salt liquorice is a favourite sweet.