imaginary food

[truepenny]

Talk to me about food in fantasy. (And science fiction, if you like.)

Readers, what kinds of details do you like to see? What makes a culture's eating habits come alive for you?

Writers (oh, please, writers, you're my only hope), how do you go about inventing cuisines and delicacies and what the street vendors sell? Especially when you are not relying on the old trick of, "I'll make this culture !Japan or !India or !France." How do you figure out what people eat?

Comments

[cattraine.livejournal.com]

What they eat depends on where they live. If they live in a delta or on the coast --lots of shellfish and fish. If they live high in the mountains, what kinds of herds do they maintain? Goats? Sheep? Do they import a lot of dried and preserved food? Are they on the Plains? Grain and cattle, buffalo etc. Do they have religious constraints to what they eat?

[cheloya.livejournal.com]

All that really depends on, I think, is climate, culture and access to trade. Whatever is rare, whether because of actual rarity and expense, or because of association with a particular festival day, tends to be a delicacy. Values and beliefs shape what is consumed, and sometimes how or when consumption occurs, but the basis of an area's cuisine will always be what is readily available to them. It's also worthwhile thinking about how tool-driven the society is, to determine whether they eat with hands or implements, and what kind of implements.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Also, how much labor is available will affect what the luxury foods are. White flour used to be expensive, now it's cheap.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Who cooks? Are there gender/class markers (like grilling in North America, jeez louise)? Where do people acquire food--shops, markets, fields, manna from heaven? Are the food-acquirers also the cooks? Is food art? If it is, does the culture value it as highly as music, painting, football-equivalents, etc? Is taste valued above texture, appearance--oh, what if the food moves? Is complicated food (e.g., pièces montéees) valued above simple food (e.g. sashimi)?

Um. I'll stop now.

[spreadsothin.livejournal.com]

Would you please elaborate on what pièces montéees are? I tried googling, but this journal entry ranks high in the list of English entries.

Thank you!

[cschells.livejournal.com]

I do prefer to read about street-vendor fare (rather than, say, home-cooked stew). In that vein, I like to know how food is packaged, and what utensils you might need in order to eat it...

[(Anonymous)]

I look at these details pretty closely when I read, and I love it when they're well thought out. Here are some things that work for me (as far as being convincing): what sorts of food readily grow in the climate of that culture? I don't want desert people eating rice, and I don't want people in a rain forest eating wheat. If you're going with street vendors selling "skewers of meat" you really have to think this through. Is meat really so fabulously cheap that it can be sold casually in a bazaar? Meat is actually extremely expensive to mass produce--and it's really only the hideous industrial practices of today that put in easy reach of the poor and even middle classes. (Take a look at the prices of traditionally produced artisanal organic meats at Whole Foods some time).

So cheap street food should largely be starches, fruits (in season) and/or insects (depending on the culture) unless the people live on the shore, in which case large amounts sea food and fish are plausible. I guess, the long and short of it is food *has* to match geography/climate.

Fun details: are these people good cooks? Do they like bland food or spicy? Mexicans have fabulous cuisine, Brazilians don't. Mexicans love spicy food, Brazilians don't. On the one hand there's English cuisine, and on the other French. I think it's interesting to think about (one can do this more crassly in a work of fiction, maybe) how a particular national character matches the cuisine. Are the Italians more passionate the English? How about the folk of New Orleans as opposed to Seattle? Where will you get a more flavorful plate of food? (Fun questions, I'm not daring to *assert* any particular thing or other).

Maybe this sparks some thoughts?

Kai in NYC

Price of meat

[michael vassar (from livejournal.com)]

In extremely undeveloped societies, such as Europe twelve hundred years ago or the American West a hundred and sixty years ago, meat is extremely inexpensive, as in such societies labor is rare and most land is uncultivated, making the produce of cultivated land relatively expensive and meat, which can be produced with minimal labor from uncultivated land, relatively cheap. As societies become more developed and their populations denser, there is more labor available relative to land, and thus more land can be cultivated, producing a higher number of calories per acre and thus supporting a larger population. Under such circumstances meat becomes more expensive and the non-elite populations become physically stunted.

Basically, per calorie or gram of protein, meat costs less labor and more land.

[yesthatnagia.livejournal.com]

As a reader, I'm more interested in what the viewpoint character is eating or doing -- and sometimes what they notice about the people around them eating. 'This person likes spicy food even more than the viewpoint character does.' 'This time of year, the wayside stalls sell only one kind of skewered fish, and the viewpoint character hates it, so she'll just grab some grilled giant spider for a quick snack instead.' Things like that.

As a writer, I'll follow everyone else and say it comes down to practical details. Is this farmland? On the coast? A city? How does or would the culture feel about meat, fish, poultry?

Delicacies are usually the things that only the privileged have access to, or are restricted in some other way. I'd go with law of rare/expensive. If blowfish is expensive and hard to come by, anyone eating it would appreciate it far more than if it were the cheapest thing on the market.

Of course, the culture's world view comes into play. I doubt many Americans would be too fond of eating skewered spiders (and don't even talk to them about balut), but fantasy cultures may not share the disgust.

[opera142.livejournal.com]

Two book suggestions, both euro-centric:

Taste: the story of Britain through its cooking (Kate Colquhoun) and Savoring the Past: the French kitchen and table from 1300-1789 (Barbara Ketcham Wheaton). Both are excellent reviews of culture + availiblity = cuisine, and how changing cultural values affect what ends up on the table.

In non-fiction or fiction, I am enchanted most by peasant food. Especially good peasant food. I admire the ingenuity and care it takes to create wholesome, wonderful food from dregs, peelings, and table scraps. I suppose feasts and sumptuous banquets are good settings for intrigue and plot turnings, but I am rather tired of them in fiction.

[mmarques.livejournal.com]

I love food and cooking. Smells and textures that make me feel like I'm eating the food are great.

[heresluck]

I'm always curious about things like the major meal of the day (when is it?), what people have for breakfast, beverages, treats (sweets and pastries), comfort foods, and how social status affects food (both the types of food and the distribution of labor around acquiring and preparing it). I'm also interested in regional and family variations on particular foods. Oh, and how food intersects with work: if someone has to pack a midday meal, what's that involve? or is food provided on the job, brought out from the house, etc?.

Speaking not as a writer but as a foodie... There are certain types of food that are common to most cultures (dumplings, flatbreads or quickbreads, soups) that are fascinating to compare precisely because within those basic parameters there are so many variations that tell us something about the basic flavor combinations and key ingredients, not to mention the things a particular region typically adds to meat in order to stretch small amounts to feed more people. Street food is always stuff that can be eaten with fingers alone and that's portable, either because it's a self-contained package (hot dog, frybread) or can be easily contained in some sort of cup and eaten piece by piece (spiced nuts).

One thing that might be worth thinking about is how a culture preserves food; there are relatively few ways of doing this -- cold storage (including root cellars), dehydration, smoke, salt, spices -- and the appropriate methods depend on which preservation techniques are locally feasible, what kinds of conditions one is trying to protect the food from (climates have different requirements depending on whether they're hot or cold, dry or wet), and of course the extent to which preservation is necessary (in climates where things can be harvested year-round, preservation is less important than in an area with winters like, oh, say, Wisconsin). How and to what extent do meals change seasonally?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Yes to seasonality! Wishing for e.g. strawberries or asparagus in December, or lamenting that the root veg are getting all flabby towards the end of the winter. Or eating fabulously out-of-season dishes as a marker of wealth.

[hagsrus.livejournal.com]

I enjoy the food details in Melissa Scott's work.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Yes- me, too. Her food details really make the culture live for me.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid it tends to be the failures that stick in my mind. Something that threw me so badly that I had to stop reading Ken Scholes' Lamentation, which I am sure is otherwise excellent, was the repeated description of characters eating "Cheddar cheese." I don't often stop reading books but that really, REALLY bothered me. Why not "sharp cheese" or "hard cheese" or ANYTHING but a comparatively famous English place-name in a secondary-world fantasy? I'm sure you wouldn't ever do this, I merely mention it as a datum.

I worry more about food if the situation is one of obvious scarcity. A lot of post-apocalyptic movies fail for me because I spend so much time yelling "What are you finding to EAT in this blasted desert/nuclear wasteland/crumbled city?!" at the screen. If people are travelling, are they carrying food with them or finding it en route? What are they cooking it in/with? If they're under siege, have they started eating the rats yet?

Lots of interesting suggestions in the thread already. Table manners, who's serving, what happens to the leftovers if any, can also all be interesting.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I found the Redwall books unreadable for similar reasons. The food's great and lovingly described... but where are the wee rodents getting the milk for their cheeses, for instance?

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

Two things I'd think about. One is what is the source of sweetness? Honey, concentrated saps like maple syrup or agave syrup? Processed sugars, which take a much higher level of technology and industrialization? Something else not yet invented? Sweets are often street food, or snack food.

Another is what are the socially accepted stimulants, the coffee, tea, mate, chocolate, equivalents. Unless it is clearly science fiction rather than fantasy, don't call it "coffee" or some name that is obviously similar to coffee. The drink or drinks that get people going, or perhaps calm them down would be sold in lots of places. Alcoholic beverages maybe as well, but some sort of drink other than water, definitely. Or is it someplace where water is sold by the glass?

This is just off the top of my head.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree on the "don't call it coffee" point. If it is behaving just like coffee, call it coffee. I only want the name changed if there's something significantly different going on. I mean, at that point why not say "don't call them strawberries"? What's wrong with people in a fantasy novel eating strawberries?

Don't call it java, that I can see.

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

All of the above comments re: location, economics, etc. are spot on.

One thing I have often noticed: in fantasy especially, people seem unnaturally devoted to bread-and-cheese for any non-sit-down meal, and some version of Roast Beast for sit-down meals. They must all be terminally constipated and verging on scurvy. (I mean, really, even the most truncated Ploughman's Lunch ought to offer one some onion.)

Every culture eats greens, even if they have to pull them half-digested out of the stomachs of slaughtered migratory ruminants. The poorer people are, typically, the more greens they eat. The kail-yard, etc. etc. Greens are a poor staple food, as they have few calories and little protein/fat, but they are plentiful (since they do in fact more or less grow on trees) and they have a long season in most climates, and they are almost never a high-status food which means artificial competition doesn't enter into it.

Alliums ditto. Wherever they grow (which is nearly everywhere that isn't polar) they are eaten in quantity.

And triple ditto with legumes. Any culture that stays stationary long enough to cook a pot of beans pretty much seems to do so. Cheap, cheerful, and proteinaceous.

Oh and: I was recently reminded of the immense significance of a culture's staple foods versus the available foods that are not staples, while reading a book on the culinary history of Italy. A quotation from a letter preserved in the state archives in Palermo described two men, starved to death during an agricultural famine, found lying on a beach with their mouths stuffed with half-chewed dune grass. They died on a *beach*. By the *sea*. Where there are, y'know, *fish* and stuff that are certainly adequate for surviving upon.

But perhaps not if you have been raised to believe that fish are not proper food, only the fruits of the earth are.

There is some evidence that this dead-on-the-beach-with-a-mouthful-of-dune-grass is a symbolic and apocryphal story. Nevertheless, not implausible. And rather potent.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I didn't join a writing group I talked to lo these many moons ago is that they wanted me to change the instance in a science fiction story where the characters were making a salad to something "more futuristic": eating food pills was suggested.

And I balked really hard at that, because people have eaten salad forever, and I firmly believe that they will keep eating salad--as you say, every culture eats greens. Food pills are stupid and overrated. Make a damn salad.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Interesting question... I haven't had to deal with this till now, but I think I would try to derive it from climate to crops, plus technology for preservation, plus trade for foods from other climates, and that would give me my ingredients list.

Then I would try to derive cooking style from culture -- are there people (or technologies) who can keep an eye on a long, slow cooking process, or are we looking for cook-and-serve-fast? Are people eating in big groups or small groups or alone? Is sensual pleasure sought or distrusted or both? How in touch is their lifestyle with seasonality? Is there a single staple crop that has to be changed up? How much of their total income are characters spending on food?

Then I would probably try to do the opposite of one or two common fantasy tropes (waybread, we're looking at you), and call it good.

[gwendolynflight.livejournal.com]

I'd make a slight amendment to this: slow-cooked food is brilliant because you don't have to keep an eye on it, except occasionally. So you could put on a stew or a casserole or a pie sort of device and wander off to do chores for a few hours. Same with baking bread, if you can afford your own fireplace (or oven!). Rotisserie requires a lot of attention, but anything enclosed can be sat on or near or buried under a fire and let go.

[literateshrew.livejournal.com]

Everyone else has given such thorough answers that I don't have too much to add, really. I will say that it's important to note the main character's home culture if they are visiting another culture so you know what they might find unusual about the local cuisine. What would they be disgusted by? What might they be intrigued by?

Also there are two examples that immediately spring to mind when someone talks about food in fantasy literature. One is George R.R. Martin's "pot o' brown" in his Song of Fire and Ice series. A tavern in the city keeps a pot of stew boiling pretty much continuously and pays a few coppers to anyone (mostly street urchins, natch) who brings meat to contribute to the pot. Disgusting, yes, but effective.

Also, Scott Lynch's wonderful "The Lies of Locke Lamorra" has some fabulous food in it that really reveals a lot about class. As well as lots of great street food references, it also features thief characters learning how to cook to better blend in with kitchen staff or high society while they fleece them. I thought that was an interesting touch.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

The Pot o' Brown isn't, or wasn't, that uncommon in the real world in some places - pots of stew have been kept going literally for years with regular additions of fresh whatever-could-be-provided and water. At least one inn in England is noted for it, IIRC.

(It's also a significant detail in the Liavek anthologies, though there it's simply called pot-boil.)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i think the food should tell two things: one about the economy, and one about the culture. (keeping in mind that one will only have a character's-eye view of either, so apply corrections for class &c. i daresay women of the 1950's knew a lot more about the state of the meat markets and the available cuts than women of my generation, by and large, and men of that time a lot less about what goes into bread or ice cream -- "are there eggs in that?" he asks, innocently :)

the economy dictates: how far can food travel? where does it come from? are there monoculture crops (the usa forces itself to live on corn in various forms, mostly corn syrup, even here in new england where you can't actually grow corn as much more than a curiosity) propped up by industry or convention, or is the farming more like it used to be in peru, where you'd plant sixteen kinds of potato in every plot, and each year three or four might do well? how far (socially, physically, culturally) is the food creator from the food consumer? does everybody fish, or is it more common to order a fish-fil-a without any idea of what species that creature used to be?

the culture dictates: who gets to eat what? is meat the preserve of men? is alcohol prohibited, or safer than the drinking water? (if a preindustrial city, you kind of have to pick between a fermenting culture or a boiling one, or have the place repeatedly purged by waterborne illnesses to the point where it's not quite recognizably a "city" by modern standards.)

my previous book was just-askew-from-this-world, so the only cultural marker was that my pov character was in graduate school, and thus unable to let free food pass uneaten and seriously addicted to caffeine; i also put in a few vegan characters. my current w-i-p is alien entirely, and will pass through several metabolic substrates: photosynthetic, predatory, and chemosynthetic, in different phases of the story.

(...i hope this helps!?)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

NB: Actually, we grow corn quite well--and in quantity--here in the Connecticut River valley, and have since the Pequots planted the Three Sisters* (and lived off 'em.)

Up in the hills, it's a bit trickier.

Another thing to consider is that fantasy often gets the source of calories flat wrong. Elizabethan England--the upper classes suffered a number of nutritional deficiencies, since brown bread and vegetables were poor people food. Mongols (and many nomadic peoples) planted crops in early spring, moved to summer grazing lands, and came back to harvest in the fall.

Most hunter/gatherer peoples, the "hunters" return about 10-15% of the calorie intake. The gatherers provide the other 90%. When you consider that human diet optimizes around 15% protein... hm...




*corn, squash, beans

random food comments.

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

I just want to point at Jo Walton's Lifeload and say "like that." The scene where everyone is in the kitchen talking about the implications of a characters arrival and people/children keep drifting in and out, helping while they're there.... that one scene defined the book for me.

I'm from the shallow south and get togethers, parties, family reunions, business, and many other things are about food.

Who prepares it, how they prepare it. Perhaps why a certain dish is important.

In my culture, the first time Brooks's mother invited me to help cook dinner was a big deal. I jumped from guest to family.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

I'm usually mostly interested in food based on what it illumines about the characters and/or world. If the character doesn't care what goes in his mouth, then I don't mention it in any detail (I've had a character go from noble food to soldier's fare to travelling peasant food and comment on ONE dish in the course of his adventures.) If the character cares, then I have a detailed description of his reaction to the burn of a given spice, and his comparison of that spice to the ones from home. If the character has financial or logistical reasons for being concerned where the next meal is coming from, it gets brought up more than if they can pretty much count on it being there when they want it.

For myself, as a writer, even if the character doesn't care, I usually ahve at least an idea what is the known cuisine of that country/class -- if it's something vaguely related to a historical place, I'll research that as far as I must, and copy what's reasonable, removing the blatant Earthisms (like "Cheddar", above.)

If it isn't, then I try to work it out based on a combination of the race/species' food needs (Are dragons omnivorous or carnivorous? How many calories would they take in a day?) and, again, the solutions human cultures have found. Sometimes this involves coming out with a complete list of spices and typical meals, other times sitting down and trying to determine how much it costs to live on fish, rice, and fruits and veggies with a modern grocery, versus "Cheap" canned goods and packaged foods. I try not to fall back on handwavium exclusively, but I also don't sweat it as long as there's *some* explanation.

In reading, I notice it the way I notice other world-building and character-delineating details - I see it plainly if it's done badly, but if it's well done, it flows smoothly with the rest of the world and character, so I only study it and appreciate it on a second or third read. I do tend to assume that one of the questions that *should* be asked in the process of worldbuilding is "Where does the food come from?", and the answer should be visible around the edges even if it's never a matter of importance to anyone. (And if you're in a travelling group, and intend to get anywhere fast without large quantities of support staff and wagons, it should NOT be stew or soup. Those are pretty stationary.)

OTOH, I forgive movies a lot more than I forgive books for invisible food source, because movies are necessarily much more compact. (In How to Train your Dragon - the movie, I know nothing of the books - I kind of pretend there are garden plots or people who gather in the woods just out of our sight and just enjoy. Because there really isn't time to fit it in more food detail than the bits about the dragons mostly fishing.)

The Steven Brust book built around a meal at Valabar's was nicely detailed, since Brust is a foodie, but also seemed to me no more or less impressive a piece of worldbuilding/stunt-writing than basing a book around Vlad's laundry list.

[sakuratsukikage.livejournal.com]

I've been lurking about here for a while without saying anything, but this particular question is one close to my heart in a way--I just love world-building, really, especially food-related world-building (as odd as that might make me sound), so I thought I might chime in.

I think, as so many people have said above me, I think it has a lot to do with geographical location, climate, and subsistence mechanisms. For instance, an agricultural society would be eating a lot of grains, starches, vegetables, but then there are lots of different forms of agriculture, depending on climate, average rainfall, all kinds of stuff like that. (I'm sure that's pretty obvious, but that's always where I start, anyway, along with a staple food--rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, amaranth, potatoes, sago, sweet potatoes?) In societies that rely more heavily on animal husbandry, meat might be somewhat more common, but not when they need the cattle to plow the fields. You can always think of things from a nutritional standpoint, like--where do they get their main starches, carbs, proteins? Do they have any religious holidays of fasting, like Ramadan, or like Lent, where people don't eat meat?

I think another important thing to consider is trade routes, and so on. Do they have plants from the new world or the old world, or both? Spices from India and Indonesia used to be among the most exotic and mysterious delicacies out there, with stories being told that cinnamon birds collected the sticks from a far away land and used them to build their nests, and so on. But of course in India spices aren't nearly so rare, thus leading to spicy, heavily flavored food. So whenever I want to come up with a delicacy, I think about what things would be most highly coveted but the hardest to get (and for a lot of history, a lot of delicacies involved sugar, I think). As for what the street vendors sell, I usually think fried food, but I think that's kind of an American stereotype. I think the key to figuring out what street vendors sell is whether or not you can carry it around with you or eat it standing up, really (though in Edo period Japan a major street food was noodles, which isn't usually what I picture). And also how they tend to flavor and cook things--heavy spices? Not heavy? Bland? A lot of dairy? Not much dairy at all? A lot of fermented food? A lot of frying? Boiling? Roasting? Indian food tends toward sauces and mixtures, Japanese food toward rice and raw food, British food toward boiling. I think there tends to be a whole culture surrounding and infusing what people eat, since food tends to take a prime place in people's thought processes--especially when they don't have it. And then there's always alcohol--wine, beer, distilled or not, or what, people will definitely put effort into acquiring it. Do they mainly drink alcohol? Tea? Water?

I think a major thing that makes food come alive for me when I'm reading about it is the table manners (fingers? flatbread? eating only with the left hand? communal eating around a brazier? sitting down to eat at the family table? dressing for dinner? four forks? forks at all?). Another would be the smells involved, even more than the tastes, I think, because it can be so evocative of place and mood, whether it's the smell of spices or baking bread or when someone's just burned the dinner for the third time.

I don't know, I hope that's helpful and not just repetitive!

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

And as to street food, what do they have to carry it in and eat it with? Presumably disposables: banana leaf, chopsticks. Are gourd skins or coconut hulls plentiful enough to give away and throw away? In parts of India, cheap clay cups, use once and smash (sun fired?).

[oceankitty1.livejournal.com]

Why not go for the culinary delights of a country that isn't so well known, like Norway? Fish, fish and more fish. Lots of sauces and very few vegetables. We used to eat horses and bears. Hello o_0

[oceankitty1.livejournal.com]

I have to add: In the instances the writer has been able to convey the idea of what people eat and describe it in a plausible way, it has made the reading experience more real to me. I love food. Food is one of the basics of the everyday life, and it should have it's place in any work of fiction. Describing food that has no common link to the food we eat every day would be fruitless I guess. There has to be some recognition.

[renatus.livejournal.com]

I enjoy reading about food, period -- I don't think stories have enough about food in them in general! Also, I'm a tactile person and I very much enjoy it when an author describes the texture and feel of the foods.

[(Anonymous)]

Most "literary" food seems to be described as either delightful or disgusting (presuming here that the backstory of what food production and seasonality are like has been properly worked out). If you think about childhood experiences of food, however, they mostly (for me) come down to what's frequently served: frequent enough to be boring, frequent enough to be comforting. The difference between "boring" and "comforting" is often one of execution or of personal taste. What's the "meatloaf" experience? (I was intrigued and charmed by reading a blog from a resident of the Pacific Northwest for whom the salmon season produced a long, long experience of increasingly tired ways to use up salmon leftovers. Salmon! My favorite! As the almost legendary post-Thanksgiving turkey-leftover recipes reveal, there's always a back end to festival food and seasonal eating, which produces a weird similarity to starvation-level economies: cabbage again, turnips again, just rice, just potatoes. So once you've worked out what they have to eat, I'd say working out how often they have to eat it comes high on the verisimilitude chart. Is variety available to anyone? Seasonally? Based on wealth? Based on skills? on land? And when it comes down to scarcity, what is the "just" that's left? But once you know all that, the best way to convey it, I think, is to let us see what they're tired of eating, what they're amazed to see, and what gives them comfort.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I forgot to sign that comment. So here's a book I like quite a bit.

http://www.amazon.com/97-Orchard-Immigrant-Families-Tenement/dp/0061288500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300049970&sr=1-1-catcorr

Susan Loyal

[avidreadergirl.livejournal.com]

this is making me sooo hungry....

[neverless.livejournal.com]

Anne McCaffery has an amazing food-culture in her Pern world (dragonriders, whooo)

Bumbleberry pies, klah (coffee), wherry steak (big turkey dragon thing), etc. It's been years since I've read her as obsessively as I used to, but her world is fleshed out enough that she's had two editions of an encyclopedia printed, and a guide book.

<3 her for worldbuilding.