Arcus Raytheft was in his own kitchen, a room he finally had full access to after his years of living at the Raytheft estate, where he had needed permission. Now that he had his own place, he could use each room whenever and however he pleased. He could cook whenever he liked, and make whatever he wanted. Though small, it was one of the pleasures that having his own space had afforded him.
“What are your plans for today, Master Arcus?”
“Well asked, Mr. Ingvayne! Today, I shall be making a dessert!”
“Is that why you called me too?”
“Correct, Eido. I hope you’re ready to work hard.”
“More than ready.” Eido seemed strangely enthusiastic. “You’ve been more particular about cooking lately. Have you decided to give up on sorcery and become a chef?”
“No, there’s just a lotta stuff I wanna eat. And if I wanna eat it, I gotta make it first.”
Lainur’s sweets were lackluster at best, despite the abundance of ingredients available here. Sugar was expensive, but not prohibitively so for nobility, so it was incomprehensible to Arcus that nobody had thought to push the boundaries of what they could do with the ingredient. They already had a tea culture here, which should have been a prime opportunity for somebody to create cakes or cookies, but no matter where Arcus looked, it was always the same, uninspired boiled sweets.
Without cookies, cake was a pipe dream, and chocolate was a pipe dream’s pipe dream. Arcus just couldn’t wrap his head around it.
“Hey, Noah, how come there’s no candy here except those lumps of boiled sugar?”
“I’m afraid there is no answer to your question aside from ‘that’s just the way it is.’”
“But when it comes to food, the nicer it tastes, the better, right?”
“I agree. I believe the reasoning may stem from The Spiritual Age.”
“Huh?”
“It is said that the people of those times would offer colorful boiled candy to spirits and sprites. It is a matter of tradition that one can still buy this type of candy today.”
“Now that you mention it,” Eido said, “I rarely see any other variety, no matter where I go. And I’ve traveled a lot.”
“Is that why no one’s ever bothered to make anything sweet to go with tea?”
It still sounded like a lame excuse to Arcus. Living things craved sugar naturally, which was why humanity had put so much effort into pleasurable ways of consuming it—in the man’s world, at least.
“Perhaps it is because there has been a historic lack of ingredients which can be combined with sugar,” Noah said. “The milk and eggs you buy may be widely available at the market now, but they have not always been so easy to obtain.”
“I guess there’s not much scope to experiment without the right ingredients...”
On this point at least, perhaps he had been wrong to compare the man’s world to this one. Automobiles and trains didn’t exist here, logistics were poor, and duck was the only meat anybody would consume on a daily basis. Chickens were valued much more for their eggs than their meat, and cows were too difficult to feed sustainably.
With pigs, there was the fact that the hex-fearing citizens of the kingdom could not abide the threat of a sounder breaking loose and contaminating the environs. Their rearing was highly controlled and limited to specialized facilities, making pork somewhat of a delicacy. If Arcus was ever to achieve his dream of eating one burger a week, he would need to wait till he had his own territory, so he could set up his own pig farm.
“Nobles who can afford a steady supply of ingredients tend to favor cuisine which looks impressive. Colorful candy fits that bill nicely, and always goes down well at parties.”
“That makes sense, since nobility is all about appearances. It makes sense that they’d make stuff to look amazing over tasting amazing.”
“I believe the reason may also lie in Lainur’s prolific martial houses,” Noah continued.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“The royal family, too, is a martial house, one which promotes fortitude and vigor. To Lainur’s west lies the Gillis Empire; to its east, ethnic tribes like the Hans; and to its south, Granciel. Neighbors such as these make disputes common, and the nobility here must constantly devote itself to battle. Though it is now in a state of relative peace, the capital itself was a horrific place to be only ten or twenty years ago.”
“You mean there was so much war that people didn’t have time to worry about sweets, and it was only a small while before I was born that things calmed down?”
“It is pure supposition, but I believe it is an explanation which holds some water.”
“Huh. I guess desserts are a luxury they couldn’t afford...”
Culture flourished primarily in periods where money and time were plentiful. Running a war required tremendous amounts of food for soldiers, leaving commoners with less. Especially if war was constant, any surplus ingredients that might have been used to create desserts would have ended up as provisions for the military. The constant conflict might also explain why Arcus was left scratching his head at some of the more primitive design choices he’d seen in noble gardens; the engines of culture had only just stirred from an idle state.
Noah turned his attention to the ingredients and cooking utensils on the table. “You are not planning to use magic in order to bulk up your food, are you?”
“Why would I bother doing that? I’m not a sumo wrestler, y’know.”