Worldbuilding 205: Food and cooking
Greetings and salvation! … You know, I am gonna let this one slide because today you will be salivating a lot over all the delicious foods we will be discussing!
What is food?
Everyone intuitively knows what food is for humans, but would you qualify faecal matter as food? Of course not, that is disgusting! Poop sandwich, ew! But for some animals, it is part of their diet and would be to them… food. I won’t spent more time on this particular thought because I don’t want us all to be disgusted all the time, so I will define food as following:
Food is anything that the organism in question can consume and extract nutrients and energy from in order to live.
Yes this does make food a relative term based on species, type of life, and the whole shebang, but that is what this blog is about! Going beyond the norm!
Types of food
There are many ways to divide up food, and I will show several ways to split it. For the first one, I recommend you read my post on alien biologies! I am expanding a few adjective’s meanings here, but the derivation should be obvious.
Autotrophic: These are food sources that stem from lifeforms that are autotrophic, meaning they produce their own energy and nutrients without relying on other organisms to be consumed. Vegans love this one as plants are the only autotrophic organisms on earth (that matters). These tend to have little to no cognitive functions.
Heterotrophic: These are food sources that rely on life that is heterotrophic, meaning the food source itself eats other living beings in order to survive. This category of food tends to have a wide range of cognitive capabilities, making some people squeamish about eating them. You have to have a brain to find other lifeforms to eat! Well, not necessarily.
For normal humans, this will boil down to plants vs meat, but I am giving these broader definitions because what if you have fungimals? Their “meat” might be quite different and be heterotrophic! Fun fact, fungi are in the heterotrophic category.
Another important division that has fueled society for ages is this one:
Staple food: The main food you eat that is part of a large portion of your meals.
Nutrient food: While staple food is in of itself nutrient-dense in order to be staple, I am here referring to additional food items that give nutrients but may be more rarely consumed.
Flavoury: Think like spices of all sorts where their only job is to give the food flavour. They contain little to no nutrient content but serve to make the food more palatable and pleasant to eat.
I would say these are the two most important ways to divide food up into useful categories for worldbuilding purposes.
Food’s role in society
Food is something every organism needs to survive, unless you are autotrophic but I doubt plants and the likes will be reading this! Anyway, it is something that is necessary and people are social in order to create civilisations so of COURSE they have to make a huge social spectacle out of it. As an Autist, this pissed me off endlessly growing up. Give me food and leave me alone!
But people are not like me, so here we are! Because food is a necessity of life and something everyone has to do, you have made a spectacle out of it. The exact nature of this differs from culture to culture. I will go into options in a bit, but to say that food plays a large part in society and has a role in it is an understatement. Cultures even identify themselves through their cuisine.
Cuisine
As good of a spot as any to dive into the cuisine then! I am the mastress of segues! Cuisine is dictated by four factors for any culture: what is easily procured, what is edible, what is flavourful for the people, and what preserves. For humans, the five flavours are Sour, Sweet, Umami, Bitter, Salt–I talk about it in my post on senses. Go read it as it will help you be more alien! Anyway, what is flavourful depends on the species and such, and you can settle for humans,and that is fine! The fourth and final one is preservation. Food spoils quickly so any means that is easy enough to preserve it will be favoured heavily by civilisations that don’t get food all the time.
These are the reasons why regions where a lot of spicy food existed developed cuisine based on it. This is because the spiciness helps preserve the food so it lasts longer. Same with smoking where they had good wood for it. Another common tactic was salting where salt was abundant.
So to determine the kind of style of cuisine your people would have, answer the following questions:
What heterotrophs and autotrophs do they eat?
Are either one possible to use to preserve food and make it last longer?
Which combinations of foods will give all the nutritional needs of the species?
The first one is just animals and plants for a human based world, the second one, heck I don’t know, we have spices, but what if there is an animal that has a special stomach acid that tastes decent and can help make food last longer by making it more acidic? The third one is what differs between staple foods and nutritional food. Staple food is generally easy to grow and is in a lot of food, but their nutritional content is insufficient to be lived on.
Edibility
Of course, this raises the question, how do people figure out what is and isn’t edible to begin with? In modern times, you have various analytical methods that can tell if it is plus thousands of years of experience. But if it is entirely new and foreign, how does one know? Well… trying. People tried food and hoped they woke up the next day. And most things are not highly toxic, and those that are taste bitter so there is a warning to avoid it. But humans try anyway, and sometimes they die… sometimes they didn’t, and it became part of the cuisine.
Classy food
Just like clothes–is that on the list Anne?–food will be used as a status symbol. This generally coincides with how much labour it takes to acquire and make the food. The more labour it requires, the more classy it is considered. This, however, is not always the case. An example from the U.S.A is the lobster. It used to be a peasant food that the working class ate because it was so easy to get, and you caught too many of them anyway while you were out fishing and wanted to get rid of them. Then things happened, and suddenly it became a classy type of food, and those who fished lobsters made loads of money.
So how do you determine in your world what would be considered a classy form of food?
The more work is required to make the food
The more rare the ingredients are
The more dangerous consuming it might be
The more rare the dish is
The last one can easily be artificially done but is important. All these factors play into what will be considered a classy form of food vs peasant food.
Cooking
Now, humans do not like eating food raw. It is in fact rather bad for you as you do not get as much nutrients out of the food as your digestive tract has evolved to eat cooked food. Cooking helps break down the organic molecules, which means your body doesn’t need to use energy to break it down, thus getting more energy and nutrients from it, while also making it easier to eat. So we will assume your people do cooking to support their ENORMOUSLY HUGE HEADS! An important part to this is, of course, heat, as it is the heat doing the job. Now there are a few classical ways to cook food.
Boiling
You heat the water up, let it lie in there as the water is at max temperature, and let the water do its job and break things down. This has the added benefit of introducing more water into whatever you are boiling. This is also a great way to let a lot of various flavours get into the food as they can be mixed into the water and then into the solid pieces of food in return–it’s all mostly water anyway! Of course if you have other liquids instead of water for your species, that can be used too!
Simmering
Simmering is similar to boiling, but instead, it maintains the temperature just below boiling and doesn’t make it full on boil. But for the purpose of this blogpost, by simmering I mean anytime you maintain a controlled temperature with little variation under the boiling point. I know sous vide and all that, and it has other names, but for now, this goes! The benefit of this as compared to boiling is that boiling can be quite violent and destructive to molecules. Sometimes that's what you want, other times you want the effect of water in water, as in water based organic things in water cooking, and have things mix while cooking. This is it then. Sometimes this is the final step to imbue flavour into already cooked meat at which you don’t want too high temperatures to ruin what is already done.
Deep Frying
This is similar to simmer in that you are BELOW the boiling point of the liquid in use, the difference is that it generally is above the boiling point of water since oils are used instead. This causes rapid cooking of the external parts, which is why it is common to have something around what you are deep frying, such as flour or breadcrumbs.
Grilling
Grilling is when you cook over an open flame. Anyone who has been around a fire knows the air can get REALLY hot and actually burn you. But air is a very poor conductor of heat, so the heat of the air is not strongly put into the food being cooked. It will still transfer heat, and if done wrong, can cause huge burnings on the food as everyone who has grilled knows. This has the benefit of giving certain flavours that come from the wood or coal that gets deposited onto the food or gets into it.
Frying
This is similar to grilling in a way, but different in more ways. Namely you use a pan of sorts. They are made out of metal which is a great conductor of heat. This is why frying is such a great way to sear meat! You can get it really hot on the surface to get those special protein breakdowns that look and taste amazing. Similar to deep frying, the exterior is heavily cooked, but because it is only on one side and you have to move it around, you let the sides rest and not break down fully as the interior is slowly heated up from various sides.
Ovening
Yeah yeah technically not a word BUT YOU GET IT! Now, this is similar to simmering in that it gives uniform temperature everywhere, but ovens obviously use air instead of water. This means that the heat is slowly moving from the exterior to the interior. Due to the rather poor conductibility of air, the heat transfers faster from the surface and inward than from the air into the surface of what is being cooked. Water conducts heat better than air. This makes it so burning is generally less of an issue. Of course, modern ovens have additional heating elements and ways to direct heat so you can get that crispy surface you desire even in an oven which makes cooking easier and better!
On the move
Not a cooking style per se, but I am adding it here anyway because it is often relevant to adventures. How do you cook food when you are on the move? Grilling is the most common way: get a fire going, put the stuff near the fire, and let them be grilled, easy peasy. Of course, a simple frying pan or a pot you can put over the fire means you can do almost all of them, but an important thing to think on is that cookware weighs a lot, and that will make travelling more difficult. But for better food, it might be worth it!
Food related customs
Now all is cooked, it is all being placed on the table, and damn it, more rituals! Humans! Anyway, there are a lot of customs and stuff related to food, both just the eating of it and at specific times and seasons.
Utensils
What do you use to eat the food? Some is hand food and it is fine to just grab it and eat. Other foods YOU MAY NOT DO THIS! And other foods require different utensils. Chopsticks vs fork and knife vs spoon, for example. Of course, one can make up one's own utensils. The general job of them are to make certain food come cleanly into the mouth from the plate, bowl, or anything that is used to have the food. One reason why knives are not often used in East Asia is because meat and everything is often already made into bite sizes. If you do that during cooking, then having a knife is pointless at the table. If you serve the food less prepared and cut, then a knife is necessary.
Forks are similarly designed for their purpose, namely dig into and hold onto the food somewhat. Why I bring this up is that if you wish to make up your own utensils, you need to consider how food is made during cooking and what is necessary during eating to do it without spilling sauces, soups (which is not food, it’s a drink, fight me!), meat juices, and more all over the person and their clothes.
Religion
Religion can play a large part with the customs of devouring food. I know a large portion of my audience is from the U.S.A., and there the practice of saying grace at food and such is common, though not nearly as much as it used to be. But it's still around! Other ritual customs may get entangled as well. Some foods are banned by a religion, other food has to be prepared a certain way to be correct. So you could easily make up also ways that food has to be consumed by a religion, and it depends not only on the type of food, but which specific dish it is!
It would be interesting for sure! Okay, I am doing this for myself!
Holidays
Holidays of course play an important role in this. While today people have access to any food at any time of the year, that was not the case in the early days! And holidays are as old as human civilization and even older. The holidays come all throughout the year, so a lot of customs are dependent on the season and what is available. What you eat, how you cook, what you celebrate all tie into the season. Like Christmas, despite its name, comes from a holiday celebrating winter solstice to mark that days will finally get longer!
The actual meal
We have been dancing around it, so the question is, what do you do during the actual meal itself? In some cultures it is fine to chew with an open mouth, others not. Others eat alone even if someone cooks everything, others gather everyone together for a giant meal! (I hated this). In some cultures, the meal is over whenever you are done, in other cultures it is done when the last person finishes, in others it still takes time after as you have to talk. Can you talk while eating, or is it just this after eating part where talking happens? Can you talk with food in your mouth? Lots of things to consider that can make for cultural conflicts!
Religion and food
I went into it a bit earlier about when you eat, but there can be a lot of other things in the intersection between religion and food. Some foods can become sacred, and thus you cannot eat them outside of specific religious circumstances. Even some ingredients are religious, and thus the church, shaman, whatever you have, has a monopoly on it. Then of course certain religious acts can require food ranging from the mundane to the fancy. Though the more often this ceremony is done, the more mundane the food is. Bread and wine from the Catholics anyone?
Alien foods
So you want to make interesting alienesque foods and dishes–how do you do it? Let’s start with the ingredients.
Ingredients
We had the division above but we will do them one at a time.
Autotrophs
Assuming they are similar to plants we can divide things up by where they grow and what they are.
Roots: They are literally the thing growing into the ground, and they can be edible.
Fruits: They are made to entice heterotrophic life to consume them and spread seeds.
Nuts: They are a kind of fruit but last longer and work on the strategy that the nut collector forgets some of the stashes and not through the poop machine.
Leaves: They are the plant parts that photosynthesize; some leaves are nasty though, no eat!
Bulbs: They are structures meant to store energy for bad times for the autotroph.
Stems: They are the main structure holding a plant in position.
I think that is all? Anyway, these are the main parts of earthly plants taken to eat and consume! Now, you can use these words for alien stuff as well, as long as they fulfil similar roles for the autotroph you imagine. But what if you want more? Well, then you have to come up with structures that serve different purposes. One we can take that does exist but isn’t really used is… bark! Woof baby! Anyway, enough catcalling, or dogcalling? Bark on earth is not used by societies a lot other than very niche ones but what if your society has a tree that has a bark that grows stuff with a flavour that people like?
Now an idea for a more alien world! We will be having chemophototrophes, meaning they use both chemicals from the environment and photosynthesis to produce food. We shall name it a Ksil. It needs both to survive and can only do one for a limited time. The atmosphere has Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) that the ksils use in part of their photosynthesis. Now it can have 2 kinds of “bulbs”, one stores Hydrogen sulphide and another stores “pre-products”, by which I mean half finished products that the photosynthesis can alone create but then requires H2S to finish the work. These can then be bred until we have onion-like plants and other things, huge bulbous plants that have one, the other, or both! Imagine the flavours!
Heterotrophs
Fungi and mushrooms fall here but I feel for our discussion, it will not be relevant, so out they go! I am talking about animal-esque food mostly, planimals, fungimals, etc. When it comes to these motile creatures–motiles? A motile? I’ll use it as a noun to describe things that move like an animal, huzzah!–Anyway, when it comes to motiles, you have muscles, and they are the primary sources of food as they contain loads of proteins, lots of energy, and more. Organs are a tasty treat as well; anyone up for haggis? A lot of motile meat is categorised by where the muscles come from because how they are used and their needs affect the muscle composition and amount of usage.
But if you have more than one motile kingdom, like fungimal and animal, the fungimal’s muscles can taste and behave quite differently! And on top of that, you have new organs to eat! I don’t remember which animal's penis is regularly eaten, but it is! So for a fungimal, if they make spores, maybe their spore sacks or organs are tasty! The thing to think about is what can they have that is new, what different organs can they have. To give some help on organ creation for food, here are the general jobs of organs, Anne, ADD ORGANS TO THE IDEAS LIST! (Anne: On it, boss!)
Protection
Structure
Pump blood
Acquire oxygen
Feed
Extract nutrients
Process information
Filter rest products from biological activities
Filter fluids
Just a small list, and you can slam some of these together, split them apart further to make new organs, and give them flavours! And of course, make new names for new parts. Like the Sakirakani from this blog on non-cruel animal sports are unlikely to taste exactly like animals you are used to because their muscles are structured differently, maybe the fancy meat is the butt! I can say also as a writer, calling something a fish, chicken or whatnot, like “Trexian chicken”, is perfectly fine. It can be a colloquial name used by Earthicans, it can be you translating to make it better for the reader/viewer, whatever. As long as you don’t say it is an actual chicken, just “chicken like”, it gets my stamp of approval 👍
The dishes
Now we have weirder ingredients, and we need alien dishes! Honestly, this is a huge list of possibilities. I am one who likes to categorise things and make it finite and neat and tidy, but when it comes to dishes, it just simply isn’t possible. Because people group them in so many ways with so many overlaps, it is just too many. But my advice in order to make an alien dish is to take food methods and styles and mix them together. Like you imagine sushi with rice, well now it gets potato! Or maybe it gets bread instead. Mix and match rare things and on top of it, mix in with ingredients from before, and of course various cooking styles, sometimes stuff gets better if you grill it first then deep fry it!
Summa summarum
Anyone else hungry? Yeah me too! Anyway, what have we learned here? We have started our journey on food, and I will undoubtedly return to this topic in more detail, but the key things to take from this is that food and dishes are dependent on geography, available lifeforms, cultures, history, seasons, and everything, while always playing a central role in a culture. I also gave some suggestions to make more alien dishes to imagine along with ingredients. So all in all, go nuts and feel comfortable using Earthican terminology to quickly convey what you are going for even if it is not accurate–some shortcuts are worth it!
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