Danish vs Mexican food & cuisine

Denmark

SEASONINGS

Danish cooking is fat-forward. Butter and cream are the base ingredients. The other major flavor source is preservation: smoked fish, cured meats, pickled vegetables — these carry most of the interesting flavor in traditional Danish food.

Danish cooking threads sweetness through savory contexts constantly: red cabbage rødkål is braised with sugar and vinegar, pickled herring is sweet-sour; brown sauce gets a small amount of sugar to round it. Remoulade — the yellow condiment you get with fish — is noticeably sweeter than its French cousin.

Dill is the signature herb. If one plant marks Danish food as distinctively itself, this is it. It goes with fish, with potatoes, with cream sauces, and in pickles. Allspice marks Danish savory cooking, it goes into frikadeller, sausages and braises. Nutmeg appears in white sauces, in creamed spinach, and occasionally in meatballs alongside the allspice. Caraway goes in rye bread and certain cheeses. White pepper gets used in traditional recipes more than black, which is a specific northern European tendency.

No garlic in traditional cooking. Onion does the allium work — fried onions, caramelized onions, raw rings on smørrebrød. Garlic is now normal in contemporary Danish kitchens, but it has no deep traditional roots. No heat whatsoever. No chili tradition, no peppercorn dishes, nothing that builds warmth through capsaicin. The only heat in traditional Danish cooking is the vague warmth of allspice and white pepper. No complex layering of spices. Danish cooking uses one or two spices per dish, added simply, without the idea that spice complexity is a virtue.

Danish mustard is strong and grainy; it functions as both a condiment and a flavoring. It goes with herring, with pork, as a base note in dressings and sauces. It provides the closest thing to real sharpness.

The Christmas spices — cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger — constitute almost a separate parallel pantry that activates in December and disappears again. Brunkager, pebernødder, æbleskiver batter, gløgg — this is when Denmark actually uses a complex palette. Cardamom in a weekday Danish dish would read as wrong, but in Christmas pastry, it’s essential.

SAUCES

Danish sauces moisturize dishes and enrich them mildly. Almost all of them are dairy-based, thickened with starch.

BRUN SOVS – brown sauce made from pan drippings, thickened with flour, sometimes with a pinch of sugar to round it out. Goes on meatballs, roast pork, almost any hot dish that needs something on it.

PERSILLESOVS – béchamel with parsley chopped in. Butter, flour, milk, parsley, the sauce for stegt flæsk — the dish Danes voted their national dish.

FLØDESOVS – is a cream sauce, used with chicken, game, mushrooms. Sometimes just reduced cream.

SENNEPSSOVS — mustard sauce — pairs specifically with poached cod. Cream or butter base with mustard stirred in. The mustard adds the closest thing to sharpness that Danish sauces typically get.

REMOULADE – is the most distinctively Danish sauce. It’s yellow from turmeric, sweeter, milder, mayonnaise-based, with finely chopped pickled vegetables mixed through: capers, pickled cucumber. The result is tangy-sweet-mild, nothing aggressive. It goes with fish, with hot dogs, with fried fish cakes. Sold in tubes and jars everywhere, consumed in large quantities.

KARRYSOVS – a fascinating example of domesticated foreign flavors. The curry used is very mild, often just turmeric with faint cumin notes,  sold as “Danish curry powder”. The sauce ends up sweet, yellow, creamy, and so mild it barely registers as curry to anyone who knows the original. It appears in curry herring karrysild, in chicken salad, in egg dishes.

Mexico

SEASONINGS

The chile pepper is the cornerstone of Mexican seasoning – fresh, cooked, dried, smoked, ground with salt and lime. Mexicans use cilantro, cumin (Northern regions), cinnamon, peppercorn, cloves, garlic, and onion extensively.  Also, some native, often regional, ingredients:

• Epazote, a strong and earthy herb for beans and quesadillas
• Mexican oregano with more citrus and licorice notes than the regular;
• Papalo, an exotic herb which tastes somewhere between arugula, cilantro, and rue;
• Achiote/annatto, peppery spice, and reddish-brown coloring agent.

Some traditional spice blends include:

TAJIN – dehydrated lime, salt, dried ground chilies – used in fruits, vegetables, and snacks for a spicy and tangy kick. Used to sprinkle fruits, veggies, toppings for popcorn, nuts, chips, and aguas frescas.

MOLE SPICE BLEND – dried chilies, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, cumin, allspice, cacao.

BARBACOA SEASONING – Used in traditional barbacoa, a mixture of guajillo chiles, cumin, cloves, black pepper, and bay leaves is common, sometimes blended with vinegar and other spices to marinate lamb or goat.

SAUCES

Mexican cooking embraces the concept of recado or seasoning pastes, where spices and chilies are ground together to create complex flavor bases.

MOLE SAUCES is a complex category of thick, rich sauces made of 20-30 ingredients and can take days to prepare properly. Key components are chiles, nuts or seeds like almonds, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, spices like cinnamon, cloves, cumin, anise, and something sweet, like chocolate, fruit, and sugar. The main ones are sweet and spicy, chocolaty mole poblano, complex and bitter mole negro, lighter and fresher green mole verde, herby, and tangy yellow mole amarillo. Moles are considered a Mexican dish in sauce form, commonly served over meats, with eggs or enchiladas.

GUACAMOLE – both a sauce and a dish made with mashed avocados, lime juice, cilantro, onions, tomatoes, and chilies.

ADOBO is a marinade-style sauce made with dried chiles, vinegar, garlic, paprika, tomatoes, onion, cumin, Mexican oregano, black pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. Adobada is Spanish is ‘marinated’, and it can refer to different types of meat as well as al pastor (spit roast) marinade.

SALSA ROJA is a classic red table sauce of red tomatoes and chiles, onion, and garlic that can be served raw, like pico de gallo, or roasted. Used in many dishes and as a table condiment, represents essential heat in Mexican cuisine.

SALSA VERDE – is a tomatillo, serrano or jalapeño, cilantro, onion, and lime juice sauce, fundamental to everyday cooking, used both raw and cooked for tacos, enchiladas, and as a table sauce.

PIPIÁN SAUCE – made from ground pumpkin seeds, tomatillos, and chilies such as poblano, serrano and jalapeño. Similar to mole, but lighter, served with carnitas, as an enchilada sauce, with roasted poultry.

ACHIOTE PASTE / RECADO ROJO – achiote/ annatto seeds, oregano, cumin, black pepper, garlic, cloves, cinnamon. Frequently used in Yucatan cuisine to marinate meats and fish, and flavor rice dishes.