Hard-boiled eggs in mustard sauce

(Skidne æg = Dirty eggs)

Good Friday is traditionally a day of sorrow, and in Danish homes it was customary to eat the dullest food possible - in some regions, porridge made of rye-flour. In other places, however, this rather more imaginative - and tasty - dish was preferred. For that very reason hard-boiled eggs in mustard sauce has survived as a dish eaten not solely at Easter.

The egg, as symbol, has been handed down from the old pagan fertility rites, celebrated at roughly the same time as Easter.

8-12 eggs

2 oz (50 g) butter

2 tablesp. (50 g) flour

About 1 pint (1 l) milk

5-6 tablesp. (1-1 ½ dl cream)

Ground white pepper and salt

Fish mustard (a coarselll ground mustard - see below)

Boil the eggs 6-7 minutes - the whites should then be firm, the yolks still a little soft.

Make a white sauce in a thick-bottomed saucepan from the butter, flour and milk, cooking well through.

Gradually add the cream until a suitable consistency is obtained, seasoning with salt, pepper and fishmustard.

Pour the sauce over the shelled, hard-boiled eggs and serve with home-made rye-bread.

Fish-mustard is also known as water-ground mustard, because the mustard seed once used to be ground with a cannon ball in a clay bowl containing just enough water to hold the mustard together.

Nowadays a pestle and mortar may be used instead.

The dish may also be prepared with ordinary German or French Dijon mustard, although the result is not quite the same.