Denmark

Denmark gave the world smørrebrød, elaborate open-faced rye sandwiches, and, more recently, the New Nordic movement of foraging and hyper-seasonality. Pork, rye, herring, and pastry anchor a comforting Scandinavian table.

Smorrebrod has rules and a paper trail. Oskar Davidsen's restaurant listed 178 kinds on its menu in 1933, and the conventions run deep: rye bread rather than white, butter to the edges so nothing soaks through, one composition per slice, and knife and fork rather than hands. Herring goes first, then fish, then meat, then cheese.

What Danes call wienerbrod, Vienna bread, is what everyone else calls Danish pastry, and the name is the accurate one: the laminated technique arrived with Austrian bakers in the nineteenth century. The other Danish export is dated too. The New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto was written in Copenhagen in November 2004, by named authors, and is a movement rather than a tradition.

The taste of a Danish summer: red summer berries cooked to a thick pudding and served cold under a pour of cream.