Toast Skagen

Toast Skagen is a Swedish starter of cold-water prawns bound in a mayonnaise and dill dressing, piled onto a slice of white bread fried in butter, and topped with a spoon of löjrom, the golden roe of the vendace from the Gulf of Bothnia. The restaurateur Tore Wretman is credited with putting it on the menu in Stockholm in the late 1950s and naming it after Skagen, the fishing town on the northern tip of Denmark where he is said to have first improvised it on a boat; the name has nothing to do with the dish's ingredients, which are all Swedish. It is on the menu of most Swedish restaurants of any ambition, is a standard first course at Christmas and Midsummer, and is one of the few twentieth-century restaurant inventions to have become part of the national repertoire, usually eaten with a glass of cold aquavit or white wine.