DANISH MEANS STRYHN’S

NATIONAL FOOD: For lunch, Danes typically eat a piece of sliced rye bread, spread with liver paste and decorated with pickled beetroot. For many it is an abomination, but for many more it is a joy without compare. Production of the national spread has made Stryhn’s into the country’s largest supplier

Ask any Dane over 40, rich or poor, man or woman, short or tall, about their schooldays, and the conversation will continue endlessly. About the terrible German teacher, the burden of homework and the infinite boredom of physics lessons. And then the ultimate memory – the smell which spread through the classroom when the lunchtime came and 25 packed lunches were opened. It was the moment of liver paste on sliced rye bread, their finest hour. The smell of liver paste, mixed with the colour from a slice of pickled beetroot, and the rattling of greaseproof paper follows most Danes throughout their life.

     Danish liver paste is the national lunchtime food, cut in slices and laid on rye bread, decorated with pickled cucumber or beetroot. And when it needs to be fine, with roasted mushrooms, gelatin and a couple of pieces of bacon.

National peculiarity
Patés in countless variations and with almost every kind of ingredient exist all over the world. There are several reasons why liver paste has achieved such a colossal popularity in Denmark: its taste, convenience, inexpensiveness and its almost chauvinistic ability to express national peculiarity. Danish liver paste is quite simply the putty which holds traditional Danish food together.

     “The market for liver paste in Denmark is extraordinarily stable,” says director Steen Jespersen of Stryhn’s A/S, Denmark’s largest liver paste producer. Stryhn’s has around 40% of the total sales of the 20,000 tons of liver paste produced annually. “The 20,000 tons covers industrially made liver paste. But there is hardly a Danish home cook who does not have their own recipe for special occasions.”

You take . . . Ingredients for a traditional, Danish liver paste: 500 g pig liver · 300 g lard · 2 small onions · 3 anchovies · 50 g butter 1 dl flour · 3 1/2 dl stock and/or milk · 3 eggs · 4 tsp. salt · 1/2 tsp. pepper Method Finely chop the liver, lard, onions and anchovies in a food processor. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, and add the stock. Allow the mixture to cool. Add the eggs singly while beating the mixture thoroughly. Add spices to taste. Pour the mixture into a deep, greased baking tin. Place in a water bath and steam in an oven for about 1 hour at 180 degrees Celsius. When cool, serve on bread and decorate with bacon, pickled cucumber or beetroot. A special variant of the famous Danish open sandwich is called the “Vet’s Midnight Snack” It consists of a buttered piece of rye bread topped with a thick slice of liver paste. The paste is decorated with raw onion slices and gelatin, on which slices of boiled, salted veal are placed. Bon appetit!

Low fat
The reason why liver paste is so widespread in Denmark is primarily due to the huge volume of byproducts from Denmark’s massive pig production. The basic ingredients of the paste are about 1/3 pig or calf liver, 1/3 lard and 1/3 stock, milk, onion, flour and spices. But every producer and home cook have their own variations. Stryhn’s uses only fresh Danish ingredients. Danish agricultural products are subject to the world’s strictest quality control, which can be seen from the almost total absence of for example Salmonella and Listeria.

     “We do continuous product development so that we always suit the tastes of the time,” says Steen Jespersen. “Tastes are changing and therefore also liver paste. We have variations both in consistency and taste, and not least we see a trend towards lowfat liver pastes. We would also very much like to make organic liver paste, but at present the price of such a product would be simply too high. For Danes, liver paste is one of holiest daily commodities which has always been regarded as one of the cheapest and healthiest spreads. To challenge that view would be commercial suicide.”