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

[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.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree with this. If it's coffee, call it coffee. (Especially if your fantasy world has earth-analogue cultures. Albyon and Normandee, anyone?)

I like food that reveals culture and resources--do your people eat milk? What animal does it come from? How do they preserve it? Kumiss, cheese, butter, yogurt, skyr? If they do not eat milk, where do they get their cheap protein/calcium? Fish? Insects?

Deborah Doyle recs this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Much-Depends-Dinner-Extraordinary-Obsessions/dp/0802136516

I agree.

[adrata.livejournal.com]

I strongly agree with the veto of "don't call it coffee". I actually find it pretty annoying to read slight but still obvious variations of names. It seems cheap to me, a little like pouring a can of gold paint over your dog and claiming you've found a new species. No one will be fooled and you'll look dumb for thinking they would be. And if you take the freedom of translating the rest of what the people in the story say, think and see into the language you're writing in - which must certainly be different from that spoken in your secondary world - then I don't see the point of making exceptions as long as there is an English equivalent available.

If the thing in question really is different somehow from its real-world analogue/inspiration, then yes, invent an entirely new name. That's fine. (One thing I love about truepenny's books are the gazillion beautiful place names.) But if an author makes up a new word for one plant/animal/device/... that is described as obviously the same as something we know, then I expect them to be consistent and invent new names for ALL things in that category. Which would make it difficult to even describe a simple meal consisting of more than one or two ingredients. Instead of just saying "vanilla pudding topped with strawberries and little cookies", you'd get a lengthy passage of description - which might still leave some readers puzzled.

"The bowl contained a large dollop of ambrugam, a viscous, light yellow mass that always tasted a little like a condensed summer's evening, topped with some small, red berries speckled with funny little green dots - lifunia - and some baked golden-brown flakes that looked a little like tiny maen."

(I apologize if some of this sounds strange - I'm not a native speaker. But it still illustrates my point. Seeing how painfully annoying it was to write a few lines like this, I would hate to constrict myself like that for writing an entire book. And I almost tumbled into my own trap here. "Maen" was "flatbreads" a minute ago, and I first tried to describe pudding as being made by boiling milk, sugar, eggs and whatever transports the desired flavour.)

So... yeah. My humble opinion is that if it's coffe, you should call it coffee. Anything else becomes ridiculous or inconsistent way too quickly.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

If you ever have the chance to see Margaret Visser in person (or hear her on radio), go for it. She's got this wonderful plummy voice and an incredible enthusiasm for her research topics.

[penrynsdreams.livejournal.com]

Another thing to think about re: water is how the heck do they make it safe? The reason drinks like tea and alcohol became popular is because the process of making them kills a lot of germs. In China, drinking hot water is pretty common. (I read a memoir by a Buddhist monk whose older brother left their family farm to go have a hot water cart in the city.)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

In a lot of premodern cultures, sweet things are insanely rare. Fresh fruit in season. Possibly honey. If they have honey.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Stevia.

nonsense, sweet is very common

[mevincula.livejournal.com]

I've studied european food history, and particularly medieval, so I can't really comment on other cultures, but most people have a very mistaken idea what pre-industrial people actually ate. sugar was well-known(one of Alexander the Great's generals wrote about it) hence it was sometimes called Indian salt in French household books (the word sugar comes from Sanskrit). It was used extensively for medicines and, like salt, for preservation of food. Sugar was very expensive but it was sprinkled on top of almost all dishes savory and sweet. Of course, anyone who cooks medieval knows the favorite sauces were sweet and sour. Puddings, custards, candied nuts, etc. were served frequently. Other foods were sweetened with grape juice/wine and grape must as well as dried fruits. Mind you, I'm not talking about royalty here, these recipes are from household books of the bourgeois - the most famous is Le Menagier de Paris, but there are lots of them. As far as honey, in France, England,& Italy, honey was not a popular sweetener after the Romans left.(Romans knew sugar too, but preferred honey - sweets were still very common, see Apicius).

Re: nonsense, sweet is very common

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

In southern Europe, yes. But there's a lot of the world that is not southern Europe. Honeybees are a European species--they're not the only ones that make honey, but they are the ones commonly cultivated.

Here in North America, your substitute sweet is maple syrup, which is labor-and technology intensive and can only be made about two weeks a year, and does not store well (It grows mildew in warm temperatures).

Renaissance England, for example, used huge amounts of sugar (and paid the price in rotted teeth and other illnesses). Japanese or Inuit traditional diets, not so much. Likewise Iceland. Etc.

Re: nonsense, sweet is very common

[mevincula.livejournal.com]

Actually honey was heavily used by Vikings (in Iceland and elsewhere), by the Mayans (native stingless bees nearly extinct now), and the Chinese (for royals in the Zhou dynasty 770 BC - sent as gift between commoners in the Tang dynasty) for sweets. North American native tribes (northeast) made maple sugar, and others made corn syrup. Pretty much every tribe made fry bread with grape juice or berries (including the Inuit)and some made fruit puddings. The Inuit made a kind of ice cream from seal blubber, snow and berries. The Japanese have made dessert jellies from seaweed and dessert pastes from soybeans and azuki beans for many centuries. Look up Wagashi, it's a traditional dessert served with tea since about 300 BC. Sugar arrived in Japan in the 14th century and was added to the culture as well. Did pre-moderns use less sugars than the modern diet, you bet. But sweets were heavily prized and very common. the main difference with the modern diet is that today it is heavily refined. Fruit cake doesn't need any sugar to be very sweet. prunes marinated in red wine will make a very thick syrup without any cooking. Any fruit juice can be cooked down into a very thick syrup. By the way, tooth rot in Elizabethan times had more to do with how they brushed their teeth (the most common was sugar mixed with brick powder or pumice rubbed in with "tooth cloths" - which removed the enamel).

Re: nonsense, sweet is very common

[papersky.livejournal.com]

For one thing, it's harmless mildew which can easily be removed and doesn't harm the rest, not like mildew on jam, yuck.

For another thing, you can make it into maple sugar, which keeps forever. Yes, you have a pretty intensive month or six weeks when the sap is rising, but that's equivalent to farming anything. Maybe it's two weeks further south?

Re: nonsense, sweet is very common

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

It's two weeks here.

And fer crying out loud, I'm not saying and have never said that sweets didn't exist. But by modern standards, they are a small percentage of the diet--and by western standards, a good deal of the world still does not eat sweet.

(A friend of mine, of Scottish and Indian descent, talks about how when she got back to Scotland after trips to visit her father's family, she would eat white bread for dessert because she'd become so unaccustomed to sweets that it tasted like cake. She's in her mid sixties, so this would have been, oh, fifty years ago?)

Hell, I'm old enough to remember when sweets were much less of a part of the American diet, and I'm not quite forty. So saying that sweets are very common by today's standards is really not accurate.