roman cuisine?

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/3cXppXd

ayy so i added in a cute bit of backstory in a future Pearls chapter (that story, by the way, oof, okay, it’s off the rails, I promise we’ll get cute lesbians at some point but there’s this fucking OT3 exposition ok) where Morvran, as a child suddenly thrust into the Emperor’s household and expected to act in adult ways he wasn’t prepared for, would go and hide in the kitchen and of course the staff there would feed him. My rough draft has the kitchen staff feeding him toasted bread with cheese and preserves but it strikes me that if Nilfgaard is supposed to be kind of handwavily-like-Rome, then this is a perfect opportunity to worldbuild by making this comfort food be something from a different cuisine than Ye Genericke Fantasye Foods which are always like bread and cheese and giant roasts of meat.

The criteria, though– it’s something that was plated and served for him, but not something that was specially-prepared. Something that wouldn’t be tightly-inventoried. Preferably, I think, something more like what a working-class person would eat, not a noble– he’s being fed from the food stores that would be always available for servants coming on or going off shift at odd hours who’d need something to keep them going, something nobody’s counting, something already-cooked. But something comforting, preferably something involving a tiny bit of preparation, because the plot point here is that he’s stuck doing something time-consuming without time to stop and eat, and Ciri asks her cook to send him a plate, and it turns out the cook used to work in Emhyr’s kitchen when Morvran first showed up, and so he prepares this plate exactly the same way.

So having read through the extremely rigorous source of Wikipedia’s page on Ancient Roman Cuisine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine, I’m thinking it could, well– it could still be bread and cheese, but more like a hunk of emmer bread, and a wedge of cheese, or a drizzle of oil, and a side of olives or figs or preserved fruit.

or it could be a bowl of puls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puls_(food) with olive oil and honey, or it could be juscellum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jusselle#Origin or something, a thick soup with grain and eggs in it.

I don’t know how much more worldbuilding I’ll put into that, but it has given me the idea that Morvran, a child of the city of the golden tower, delightedly considers snails with fermented fish paste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum a pleasant street food snack and Geralt cannot stand to be in the room with him for several hours after he has consumed this. Geralt likes a lot of gross food but he cannot abide fish paste.

Ciri eventually gets a taste for it.

(Morvran, by the way, would be mortified to realize he’s taken over so much of this story, which really was just supposed to be about Luliana and Ciri, but there’s so much plot. I promise you, Luliana is going to be the hero of the sequel. Also for some reason I had decided I wouldn’t use Ciri’s POV in this story, since I told some of the events from her POV in the Trust stories, but when I made that choice I didn’t realize how long this story was going to be. As soon as we finally get to the hookup we’re going to cut to a new story and it’s going to be all Ciri.) (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[shadaras]

I love all the ot3 plot going on in this story, so I have zero problems with this kind of off-the-rails. :) (the lesbians will be lovely once we get there but congrats on giving us all Morvran feels along the way.)

[minoanmiss]

Oh man ancient food is my JAM. I totally love the idea of snails and fermented fish paste (FWIW, garum was basically the same thing as modern fish sauce, just opaque with little bits of fish in it rather than fully filtered). And for a child I'd definitely do bread and honey or bread and dried fruit.