Danish lunch served in London

If you are Scandinavian or love Nordic cuisine, you can buy everything for a Danish lunch in London. Luckily most of the ingredients can be found in local supermarkets, but a few things need to be bought in Scandinavian speciality shops.

Lunch is served cold and often consists of open rye sandwiches. The real fresh rye bread – often called “full corn rye bread” can be bought several places in London. If you prefer to ad butter on your bread, you should buy the Danish Lurpak of course.

The lunch starts with fish. This could be smoked salmon, fish fillet or herring. Put the fish on top of the bread (and butter). On top of the smoked salmon add “fox sauce”*, a slice of lemon and a little fresh dill or make a different version with mayonnaise, white asparagus, sliced cucumber and slices of lemon. 

On top of the fish fillet use remoulade, sliced lemons, sliced cucumber and on top of the herring use sliced onions and fresh dill. Use lettuce as garnish.  

A special curry mayonnaise salad can also be added on top of the herring.

Then the meats are served. Add a generous serving of cold cuts such as ham, salami or roast beef to the bread. Top up the ham sandwich with mayonnaise and sliced cucumber and bean sprouts, the salami with remoulade, fried onions and pickled gherkins and the roast beef with shredded horse radish, gherkins, fried onion and slices of tomato. The trick is to make everything look beautiful and colourful.

Drink Danish beer like Carlsberg and Tuborg and snaps or aquavit in small glasses. Remember that you cannot “sip” the snaps, but you will have to swallow the whole glass in one go. 
Dessert is normally cheese served with fruits and cheese crackers.
Bon appetit!






From the local supermarket:
Lurpak butter, smoked salmon, ham, salami, roast beef, onion, dill, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, mayonnaise, fried onions, pickled gherkins, horse radish, cheeses, fruit, crackers and beer.
Rye bread: Local bakery, Kamps, Scandinavian Kitchen, Nordic Bakery or Bäkehaus.

In speciality shops like Scandinavian Kitchen, Nordic Bakery, Totally Swedish or Danish Food Direct online store you will find: herring, remoulade, curry salad for the herring and the snaps.

*Fox sauce:
3 tsp. white vine vinegar
3 tsp. sugar
5 tsp. mustard
1/2 dl. vegetable oil
1 dl. finely chopped dill

Mix all the ingredients together.

Written by Marianne Sloth, who is  FOCUS Director of Marketing. Marianne is Danish and has lived in London for 4 years.



For more information about FOCUS visit:  www.focus-info.org