Sol over Gudhjem

What it is

Sol over Gudhjem, or "sun over Gudhjem", is a simple but striking dish from the Danish island of Bornholm. It consists of a thick slice of dark rye bread topped with slices of smoked herring and finished with a raw egg yolk placed in the centre to resemble the sun. The topping is usually completed with chopped radish, chives and a pinch of coarse salt.

It belongs to Bornholm, the Danish island in the Baltic closer to Sweden than to Copenhagen, and to the smokehouses along its coast, where herring is hot-smoked, traditionally over alder, for a few hours rather than cured for days. The yolk is the point of the dish: broken at the table, it runs into the fish and the bread and does the work a sauce would do.

Where it comes from

The name is Gudhjem, a fishing village on the island's north coast and one of its herring ports. Smoking was how the Baltic catch was kept before refrigeration, and the island's smokehouses were built in numbers during the 19th-century fishery; around ten on the island are still working.

Who first put a yolk on a slice of smoked herring is not recorded, and the dish is simple enough that the question may not have an answer. What it clearly is, is an assembly of what a smokehouse village had: fish off the rack, rye bread, an egg, something sharp from the garden.

How it is eaten

Sol over Gudhjem is typically served as an open-faced sandwich or a light main course. The dish arrives at the table with the egg yolk intact, sitting whole in the middle of the herring and vegetables. Diners are expected to break the yolk themselves, allowing the runny golden liquid to mix with the fish and bread below.

That is the small ceremony of the dish: pierced with a fork and stirred through the fish, it turns the whole thing into something closer to a dressed salad on bread. A cold lager or a glass of snaps, the caraway spirit, goes with it; both are there against the oil of the fish.

The annual competition

The dish has lent its name to an annual cooking competition held at Gudhjem harbour each June since 2009, in which chefs cook against each other and earn extra points for using the island's own produce. It is a fixture of the island's summer and a reason the name is known in Denmark well beyond the village itself — the contest is about cooking and Bornholm ingredients generally rather than about assembling this one plate.

Curious facts

• The yolk is raw. Unlike many dishes where eggs are cooked before serving, Sol over Gudhjem relies on the raw egg yolk for its signature texture and flavour.
• Alder is the traditional wood. The island's smokehouses have long used alder, which is milder than beech, though many now use modern ovens and other wood.
• It is not a nationwide dish. While known across Denmark, the dish remains most associated with Bornholm and is at its best there, made with herring straight off the rack.
• The name is literal. The egg yolk represents the sun rising over the fishing village of Gudhjem, creating a visual metaphor that matches the dish's name.

Where to try it

A røgeri — an island smokehouse with its own counter — in Gudhjem or one of the coastal villages near it, where the herring is smoked on the premises and the plate is assembled when it is ordered. Long tables outside, a view of the Baltic, and a lager from the same counter is the standard arrangement.

The thing to check is that the fish is the house's own smoking rather than bought in; a røgeri with chimneys working will say so, and the smell as the door opens settles the question anyway.