Toast?

I had been wondering why toast is so expensive and such a big deal here. I know that Denmark is famous for its open faced sandwiches called smørrebrød (and it’s probably offensive to call smørrebrød toast), but I wasn’t sure what the hype around toast was. Until today.

The church I go to has an open cafe after the service where they sell a little meal, usually hot dogs or waffles or something like that, and drinks. Today they were selling toast. I thought it was kind of boring that they were just selling toast but I decided to check it out anyways.

I found out that “toast” actually means a grilled cheese! And usually grilled cheese with ham too. Isn’t language funny. So if you order “toast” in Denmark, you’ll get a grilled cheese, but in order to get toast, you’d have to order a smørrebrød!

I was talking with a Danish friend about this and he thought it was funny we call it a grilled cheese because from the name, he would expect it to just be cheese, without bread. I guess it’s short for a “grilled cheese sandwich” which would be a cheese sandwich that was grilled.

My final question is, what do Danes call a single slice of bread toasted with butter and/or jam? Upon asking another Danish friend, I discovered that it’s a very complicated question to answer. Toasted bread is called “ristet toastbrød” (literally: grilled toast bread). If you put butter on it, it becomes ristet toastbrød med smør (grilled toast bread with butter).

Are you just as confused as I am? Here’s a handy chart:

If you’ve read this far you must either be really into toast etymology, or really hungry, or both! So go make yourself a grilled cheese or a smørrebrød or a toast. Whatever you want to call it, I think we can all agree that it’s delicious!

Another quirky story about cheese sandwiches before I leave you. On my study tour in the Netherlands this semester, we had to catch a really early bus and we didn’t have time to get breakfast so our hotel made us breakfast packs which was super nice of them but it was the most random food! We all got sandwiches with three slices of bread… Not sure if it was supposed to be three toasts or a sandwich and a toast or just a really big sandwich… and a capri sun and an apple!

If walls could dream… they’d dream of toast!