Denmark

Danish lunch is a quiet art form. Smørrebrød — slices of dense dark rugbrød built up into little edible pictures, pickled herring, rare roast beef under a tangle of remoulade and fried onions, a slab of liver pâté with beetroot — is eaten with knife and fork and best chased with a beer and an icy snaps of caraway aquavit. It is homely, precise and deeply satisfying, the very taste of Danish hygge.

The hot food is honest and porky. Stegt flæsk, crisp slabs of fried pork belly under a blanket of parsley cream, is regularly voted the national dish; roast flæskesteg arrives with its crackling still snapping; and the red sausage from a street pølsevogn, loaded 'with the works', is a small rite of passage. Then, in the same city, Copenhagen went and rewrote the rules: noma and the New Nordic movement turned foraging, fermenting and the cold northern larder into the most copied cooking of the age.