Denmark

Country - Denmark

Cuisine Description - Danish cuisine features the products suited to its cool and moist northern climate: barley, potatoes, rye, beetroot, greens, berries, and mushrooms are locally grown, and dairy products are one of its specialties. Since it shares its climate and agricultural practices with the other Scandinavian countries, and some of Central and Eastern Europe, Danish cuisine has much in common with them. Nevertheless, it has its own distinguishing features, which were formed by a variety of influences during the country's long and difficult history.
Before the widespread industrialisation of Denmark (ca. 1860), small family-based agriculture formed the vast majority of Danish society. As in most agrarian societies, people lived practically self-sufficiently, and made do with the food they could produce themselves, or what could be purchased locally. This meant reliance on locally available food products, which form the basis of the traditional diet: cereal products, dairy products, pork, seafood, apples, plums, carrots, potatoes, onions, beer, and bread.
Agriculture still plays a large role in Denmark's economy, and Danish agricultural products are generally preferred over imported items, although products from Germany, The Netherlands and the rest of Europe are gaining increasingly larger market shares in Danish supermarkets.
As in most pre-industrial societies, long winters and a lack of refrigeration meant that foods which could be stored for a long time came to predominate. This helps to explain the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in many traditional recipes, and the emphasis placed on seasonally available foods. It also helps explain some of the traditional food preparation processes which favored smoking, pickling, and other food preservation techniques that prolong the storage life of products. Moreover, Denmark's geography, which comprises many islands meant that before industrialization and associated advances in transportation it was difficult, time-consuming, and costly to travel great distances, or to ship products. These factors have thus helped mold the traditional eating habits of the Danish people.
Good food is an important ingredient in the Danish concept of hygge, a word that can be best translated as a "warm, fuzzy, cozy, comfortable feeling of well-being" and may be seen as analogous to the German Gemütlichkeit. While the attainment of hygge is a near-universal goal in Danish culture, hygge itself is a highly personal concept, and varies significantly according to circumstances, region, and individual family traditions. Generally speaking, however, good food, good company, wine, comfortable furniture, soft easy lighting (candle lights in particular), music, etc., all contribute to the feeling of "hygge".
Although famously liberal with respect to social values, some older Danes are fairly conservative when it comes to food. They thus appreciate traditional cooking, and are hesitant to embrace new "different" types of food.[citation needed]
In the new Danish cooking style, dishes are sometimes lighter, smaller, more nutritious and generally offer more focus on fresh vegetables. This mode of cooking is increasingly international, highly influenced by French, American and Asian cuisine, especially the cuisine of Thailand.[citation needed] Despite this, the buttery traditional cuisine is still very popular, especially in the young generations. Copyright Wikipedia