There's a moment at every julefrokost, the long Danish Christmas lunch that drifts from late morning into the early dark of December afternoons, when the koldt bord is laid out and people are deciding where to begin. The herring is on the table. The liver pate is waiting. The cheeses are still under their cloths. And almost always, the first hand reaches for an egg with shrimp on it.

Fyldte aeg med rejer og dild is one of those dishes that looks like nothing and tastes like a small celebration. A halved egg, a spoonful of dill mayonnaise, a generous heap of cold-water fjord shrimp, a frond of dill on top. Five things. The whole pleasure of it lives in the contrast: the cool firm white, the rich yolk, the sweet brininess of the shrimp, the green sharpness of the dill. It belongs to Christmas and to Easter and to any spring dinner party where you want to start the meal with something that feels like a gift.

What matters most is the shrimp. The traditional choice is small cold-water fjord shrimp, the kind sold peeled and pink in tubs in every Danish supermarket, sweet and delicate and tasting clearly of cold sea water. If you can find them, use them. If you can't, look for the smallest, freshest cooked shrimp you can buy and pat them very dry. The second thing that matters is the egg itself. Nine minutes in boiling water, then straight into ice. I'll walk you through every step so the yolk holds its shape and the peel comes away cleanly, and you'll see how easy this dish is once you understand the small pieces of it.