I'd have to say that for me the most memorable fictional cuisine is that of Geta in Kingsbury's Courtship Rite, which begins with a funeral and ends with a wedding. No human flesh is served at the wedding, because one of the brides doesn't believe in anthropophagy, but the decedent is the main course at the funeral.
An old man, Tae has been skinned and then marinated and stuffed with insect flavored bread before his body was spit-roasted. . . . he was carved to the monotonous voice of chanting and served in a spiced sauce that had been salted by a spoonful of blood from each of his eighty-three sons and seventy daughters.
There is also the brilliant scene of moral shock when Oelita sees her first photos from Earth's history, showing battlefields piled with corpses that no one is even going to eat.
Looking at things I might actually eat, Lois McMaster Bujold (especially in her accounts of Ma Kosti's creations) and S.M. Stirling both have some excellent foodie scenes. Then there was Heinlein's account of meals on Ganymede in Farmer in the Sky. For that era that's kind of rare; the fifties writers I'm familiar with are mostly uninspiring about food (the best Ayn Rand can come up with is Hugh Akston's diner serving the best burger Dagny Taggart has ever eaten). Of course I now take for granted ingredients and spices I never dreamed of in my childhood.
An old man, Tae has been skinned and then marinated and stuffed with insect flavored bread before his body was spit-roasted. . . . he was carved to the monotonous voice of chanting and served in a spiced sauce that had been salted by a spoonful of blood from each of his eighty-three sons and seventy daughters.
There is also the brilliant scene of moral shock when Oelita sees her first photos from Earth's history, showing battlefields piled with corpses that no one is even going to eat.
Looking at things I might actually eat, Lois McMaster Bujold (especially in her accounts of Ma Kosti's creations) and S.M. Stirling both have some excellent foodie scenes. Then there was Heinlein's account of meals on Ganymede in Farmer in the Sky. For that era that's kind of rare; the fifties writers I'm familiar with are mostly uninspiring about food (the best Ayn Rand can come up with is Hugh Akston's diner serving the best burger Dagny Taggart has ever eaten). Of course I now take for granted ingredients and spices I never dreamed of in my childhood.
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Oh, yes. I want to taste Ma Kosti's food!
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