Everyone fa/tg/uy knows by heart to say that dwarf cuisine is

>orcs

they're like barbarians, right? I'd expect lots of roast meat, fermented milk (i dont know if orcs have horses or cattle), simple foods, etc


gnomes probably just eat lots of pies, mushrooms, fruits, etc
just watch documtentarys on world food culture and comapare it to normal fantasy races

like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfXFI0J8Fsg

>>55319059
Dwarf food:
Meat pie with standing crust. The butter, lard, and water used to make the crust is boiled, kneaded hard for half an hour, and left to stand for half a day before use. The meat is seasoned with salt, pepper, and maybe some garlic. Also mushrooms.
The pie is left to cool for another day and is eaten cold, but not before the dwarf in questions pours a healthy cup of gravy down the hole in the top to make use of the space created when the meat shrinks during cooking.

Elf food:
Chicken pot pie - the butter, shortening, and water used for the crust is kept as cold as possible. It is kneaded as little as possible and put into the oven cold, creating a delicate, fluffy crust. To enhance the flavor, they brush milk across the top and sprinkle (the elf equivalent to) Parmesan cheese.
The variety of vegetables, subtle herbs and spices, and carefully measured ratios of flour to broth to butter to milk creates a dish so simple but flavorful that they oftentimes don't even include the chicken.

Orc food:
Mongolian-style, broiled sheep head. Or that meal where you cut open the goat, pull out the innards, and shove a bunch of live coals in to cook it from the inside before sewing it back up.
They favor foods that are easy to prepare by throwing in a bunch of on-hand ingredients and which don't need to be watched all that close.
If they lived in the modern world, the crock pot would be their favorite cooking utensil.
No two dishes ever taste exactly the same, but there's a raw simplicity to it that makes you keep coming back.
They also invented barbecue sauce.

>>55319272
Gnomes and halflings steal all their food from Brian Jacques's Redwall feast descriptions. Cheeses and vegetable pies and wines and currents and sweets and tarts and teas and the occasional fish dish. They like lots o' food and tend to be very self sufficient.

Humans
You know that scene in Howl's Moving castle in which Howl makes the bacon, egg, and toast breakfast all in the same skillet and it makes you want to eat the screen?
Pretty much that.

>>55319059
http://imgur.com/gallery/BWnHF

>>55319097
>fermented milk (i dont know if orcs have horses or cattle)

elf milk

>>55319059

This image makes me hungry.

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Oh boy, time to post these again.

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>>55319669

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>>55319687

>>55319669
>>55319687
>>55319702
>Soft cheeses in rations

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>>55319702

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>>55319730

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>>55319743

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>>55319751

Elves:
>French cooking

Dwarves
>Nordic/Scottish cooking

Drow
>North Korean

Gnomes
>German

Orcs
>Raw. Orcs are animals

Half-orcs
>Ethiopian

Halfling
>English

Tiefling
>India

Dragonborn
>Italian

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>>55319786

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>>55319788
>Drow
>North Korean
>Dragonborn
>Italian

Well. I'm not going to argue.

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>>55319797

>>55319786
>>55319772
>>55319751
>>55319743
>>55319730
>>55319702
>>55319687
>>55319669
You mean the thing anon already posted?
>>55319296

>>55319828
Who actually looks at imgur links on 4chan? This isn't Reddit. You want people to look at your images, post them.

>>55319828
>Imgur links
Nobody cares about those. This is an imageboard not a linkboard

>>55319788
But why? Very little of this makes sense based on the races' physiology and behavior. Just because they're steretypically depicted as having a certain accent and sometimes naming conventions doesn't make it right to completely subsume their food culture.

>>55319849
>Who actually looks at booru links on 4chan? This isn't Reddit. You want people to look at your porn, post it
>Who actually looks at pastebin links on 4chan? This isn't Reddit. You want people to look at your shit, post it
>Who actually looks at sauce links on 4chan? This isn't Reddit. You want people to look at your sauce, post all of it and not just a link

>>55319808
Which one's that?

>>55319908
Boorus are collections of large amounts of images that can't be posted in any single thread.
Pastebin links are for posting extremely large amounts of information that you want to preserve for a rather long time. They're also only used for generals, in the most part.
Finally, source links are for finding the source of something, so you can look at other samples of its creator's work.

If you're going to post a link to a handful of images, just post the images rather than a sterile link. It'll engender more discussion.

>>55319926
Duergar.
>Limburger, whole beef kidney, ginger and turmeric roots, Enoki mushrooms, onion & mushroom gravy hand pies.

>>55319954
Most booru links are to a single image mate.

>>55319059
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/49840229/#49844013

This is relevant to your interests.

>>55319059
I've always found it strange that DWARVES are known for their mead. Mead is made from wild honey and it's very sweet. It really seems to me like it would be an Elf thing.

>>55319059
Also, Pies especially hearty meat pies, should always be a Halfling thing.

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>>55319059
>elf cuisine is "delicate"

A chunk of elf bread is enough to make you feel full for an entire day.

>>55320180
>elf snack bread
>meal, ready-for-elf

In my setting... (TM)

Dwarves dwell primarily on and in mountains surrounded by windswept steps, so their diets are primarily dominated by meat, animal fats, barly, robust tubers, garlic and mushrooms. The three pillar animals of the Dwarven domestic life is the Goat, whose milk and meat forms the basis of their diet, the Llama, which they train to guard their goats (this is a real thing look it up) and use their wool, and yaks which are used as beasts of burden, sources of linen, milk, fuel (yak shit), and food.

Small terraced farms of barley and tubers as well as garlic will be grown on mountain side as well as mushroom groves inside the holds. Dumplings filled with meat and other fillings are common, as are barley noodles, soups and stews made from a milk base, as well as beer made from fermented milk and barley.

>>55319059
Dwarfs eat primarily elves, elves eat primarily dwarfs. Both complement with radishes.

>>55320268
Elves on the other hand tend to live in coastal regions, so fish, crustaceans, and seaweed are common staples along with yams, taro, many types of fruit and rice grains

>>55319669
>>55319687
>>55319702
>>55319730
>>55319743

Huh, I didn't know that so many people eat dog turds.

>>55319908
This is an image board, not a link board.

>>55319059
Depends on Setting (tm)

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Cuisine is 90% using whatever is on hand. That's why I get so triggered when people say things like "It's not [simple peasant dish] unless it contains [list of 15 very specific ingredients, 4 of which aren't even native to the area]. You think the average southern French farmer would give a shit if you used the wrong kind of beans in cassoulet? He'd just be happy there was food on the table.

If dwarves live under mountains with some surrounding farmland, they probably have a lot of root vegetables (although they can't be grown entirely underground as far as I know). Grains would be rye and barley. Lots of caves mean they'd have lots of room for storing food, but be very limited in where they can start fires. That means a lot of pickling and curing. Dry sausage and other charcuterie, aged cheeses, and the like. That means they'd also highly value spices (probably chillies too, if they know about them), and many would be able to afford exotic ones thanks to the mines. I'd wager their language would have a specific word for that dry, crumbly, chewy texture that hard cheese and dark rye bread have, which they'd greatly value. Meat would be chicken, goat, sheep, and pork from the farmland, and I'm pretty sure you could raise chickens underground provided you had feed.
The average dwarven miner's breakfast would be something like hard sheep or goat cheese, chicken sausage, barley bread, and a pickled egg washed down with ale. Their perfect meal would be a huge, piping hot bowl of mutton stew, heavy on onions, rosemary, and black pepper, with mead.

If your elves are the kind that live in the forest and eschew civilization and agriculture, their meals would be game meat seasoned with herbs and roasted over an open flame with fresh berries and wild greens, with everything ideally as fresh and ripe as possible. Berries don't contain much sugar, so unless other fruit grows in the forest their alcohol would be whatever the local humans make.

>>55321212
Really should add, to make this more useful to people's own settings, to think about what people have access to above all. Things you can easily grow lots of become staples. Things that are hard to get, but can still be had for the right price, become fancy.

>>55321212
I like the Warhammer depiction of Wood Elves. Mostly hunter gatherers... with the sole exception of wine. They like wine so much they adopted agriculture pretty much exclusively to keep vineyards. Everything else they hunt or gather, grapes they produce with great care and deliberation.

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>>55319059
Aranean cuisine is predigested.

>>55321212
It bothers my autism that dwarfs can't feasibly exist ENTIRELY underground. One way or another your agriculture is going to involve sun.

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>>55319059
>This faggot again

In a surprise twist, it turns out most vampires subsist on some combination of bananas and mosquitoes, the rest being blood libel

>>55321664
Vampire bats are the ones who by definition drink blood, you retard. bats=/=vampire bats.

I am so hungry right now. Fuck you all for dragging /ck/ in here.

>>55320435
That wasn't funny the last time you said it, and it's even less funny now.

>High elves
Probably mainly vegetable dishes, with meat typically served as a side or as a a mere component of the vegetable dish. I can't see them eating a lot of fruit.
>Wood elves
Whatever the hunt of the day is. Fruits are also probably heavily featured, but I doubt they would be used very creatively. Cooking probably wouldn't be to creative in general, with jam being the most complex thing at the table.
>Drow
Whatever they eat, it's probably gross.

>>55319059
Tiefling cuisine is "sumptuous".
Gnome cuisine is "nutty".

>>55322159
>I can't see them eating a lot of fruit.
Why? A plate full of thoughtfully arranged fruits is like their whole culture expressed in a dish.

Dwarves, in most settings, are usually 'new' to the outside world. Their entire culinary system would be based around what they could find underground.

There'd be quite a bit of meat and a LOT of insects. Bats, lizards, blind fish, spiders, centipedes, etc.

Mushrooms, mosses and various other lichens and stuff would probably have their uses.

>>55321647
I prefer to mumble something about magic or glowing crystals and have a weird but thriving underground ecosystem anyway, for dwarves and such to base their farming on.

>>55322235
The reason I think that is because I couldn't really picture high elves wanting especially sweet flavors. In my opinion, they would appreciate more mild and subtle tastes, like boiled poultry and green vegetables.
That's just me though, I can definitely see your argument for fruit.

>>55319059
>Dwarves
Heavy, savory dishes. Lots of lamb, goat, mushrooms, some potatoes and root vegetables, limited greens. Spices are mostly garlic and herbs Eat just about any part of the animal prepared right. Haggis, Pickled pigs' feet, Shepherd's pie, mashed potatoes, loaded potato skins.

Elves: Tend towards small portion of meat, most of which is wild game or domesticated equivalents like Elk, Deer/Venison, and Boar. Do a lot of work with baked goods and lighter sweets with numerious fruit-based dishes. Don't use a lot of spice but when they do it's a mix of mild herbs and exotic options. Tarts, quiche, croissants, etc. rather French. Wood or wild elves would deemphasize the haute cuisine.

Orcs: As barbarians they live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle with some limited animal husbandry. Meat, veggies, and dairy (if they're lactose tolerant) are all on the menu. Spices and preperation are ultra-basic but if they can find peppers they enjoy the shit out of it. Not a lot of grains in their diet at all. Jerky, stew, trail mix, etc.

Gnomes: Gonna guess as the spastic little shits they are, they probably like extreme flavors, with exactly what flavor depending on subculture. "Traditional" Gnomish cuisine would probably resemble Indian cuisine, with lots of hot and loud spices, including curry being a staple, but modern gnomish cuisine, that the city dwellers/tinker gnomes delight in, tends to go for heavily sweet and salty dishes. Your average gnomish inventor probably subsists on noodles with last week's stock (see: cup ramen), any sort of chocolate, and sweetened tonic water, sort of like your average neckbeard.

Halfling: TONS of veggies and tons of grain, with some meats too. If any culture serves up a towering stack of pancakes with a side of bacon and eggs, it's halflings, and they'll throw in a bowl of fruit and a salad too.

>>55322388
You see, I would argue that their refined palates would crave exquisite and intense flavors. Things that knock you on your ass with powerful flavors.

>>55319059
Its like the difference between high end michelin star cooking, and top tier hearty home cooking. Dwarven cooking is like going to your favorite greasy diner, or the best kept secret dive bar. That burger, those ribs, the pie? Each bite is packed with flavor that sticks to your ribs. You are warmed and filled with love. You can almost smell your gramma's perfume when the juice from that meat pie dribbles down your chin. You want to roll out the door when you are done, because you are so full that walking seems a chore.

Elves are your fine dining. It is all about the first impression. That single bite. Every sense needs to be on overdrive. The smell should make you want to faint. The plating is delicate and perfect. The texture should be just as central as the taste that is now exploding through your mouth. Even the sound of the crust breaking should be at exactly the right pitch. It all culminates in one intense moment.

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>>55319059
Assuming that gnomes are Jews...

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>>55322235
>A plate full of thoughtfully arranged fruits is like their whole culture expressed in a dish.

>>55319296
>dwarf
you gonna eat those coins?

>>55322610
Orcs are the height of simplicity. The best orcish cooks in my mind, would be those that have made their success when they chose their ingredients, not when they prepared them. Elevating simple dishes into something more than their sum. A ribeye can be a steak dinner, or life affirming. What matters is how well that simple cut is prepared, and how good that cut was to begin with.

Gnomes to me are molecular gastronomers. That big headed little shit is going to make a foam out of a owlbear's liver, and it is going to taste delicious. That warg chop was smoked with the bark from a dryad's supple thighs, and it was plated around a thousand ice pink roses that were miniaturized into the size of a grain of rice each. Did you know that the digestive system of the common gelatinous cube makes a great meat tenderizer? Did you know that you can tenderize your meat until it is nearly liquid, freeze dried in a white dragon's pancreas, and then crumbled over a delightfully simple corn muffin? That is gnomish cooking.

>>55322613

The thing about jewish cuisine is there's no defined set of food. Jewish cuisine has always been just their own version of whatever region that group of jews are living in. Hence why Spanish Jews are big on fish meals and Israeli Jews eat what is basically middle eastern food (with slight differences, Arab use fava beans for falafels while Israel uses chick peas)

>>55322925
>Arab use fava beans for falafels while Israel uses chick peas
I'm sure both sides would go to war over it.

>>55322986

They practically have in the past, on the grounds of "there's only one way to make a falafel"

>>55322691
>>55322235
my sides

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>>55322925
>>55322986
>>55322996
Now I'm reminded of the "do you eat hot sauce or yogurt on kebab" argument from Gundam SEED

>>55323056
Yogurt for lamb kebab, hot sauce for beef kebab, peanut-based sauce for chicken kebab
I thought this was common knowledge.

>>55321647
In my setting they live off of underground vent worms in volcanos, and their "beer" is actually to keep them from being poisoned by the acid's and metals in their food. Dwarves don't live on the surface at all, and have tremendous difficulty digesting surface food. They also are long lived and few because that is the best way to make due with a diet of slowly unpunctuated worm growth.

To add more to the dwarf cuisine, the Dwarves book series mentions food a decent amount as the story is about a dwarf raised among humans returns to his people. They mention a very pungent cheese, mushrooms and in one city, Giant beetles as the protein. This are off the top of my head so going back specifically to look for the food could reveal more, but the Dwarves in that world definitely seem to be able to get along underground exclusively.

I think part of the problem is we almost forget it's a fantasy world where there can be more 'exotic' food sources as the normal easy to get staples.

>>55320135

Yeah. A lot of these posts are assuming agriculture that implies a basically human lifestyle. First you have to determine where elves dwarves etc get their food, and THEN you work from there.

And btw dwarves buy all their food from humans seems totally stupid to me. I know Tolkien did it too.

For me, it goes like this: dwarves use terraces for growing crops at high altitude, and isolated, boxed in valleys already used for forestry but seconded for wild herbs and meat (goats, mostly, and left to roam free until hunted). Food is stored in barred caves above the snow line.

So for them, milk and dairy are seasonal foods (made from goats). Potatoes are common, including flakes and used to make bread. Vegetables too, especially root vegetables and winter squashes. Summer vegetables are often pickled; dwarves obsess about having adequate food stockpiles. The big protein is goat, but mutton and venison and pork are common too. Grains are there but not the caloric staple that they are for humans. Mushrooms are a delicacy because the wood from forestry is at a premium and growing it in dwarf manure is a recipe for disease. Compost is recycled back into the terraces and forest valleys. Dwarf food is heavy and eaten communally by the clan: huge cauldrons of stew, big roast animals on the spit, they're signs of wealth and unity. "Family style", humans call it, but dwarves just see that as normal.

As with humans, where grain is the main staple but which grain and how it's prepared varies by region and culture, dwarves have a lot of leeway to play with this formula.

>>55320268

Similar to my setting. I love your ideas anon

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>>55319335
>elf milk

Sounds legit, gotta do something with all the stuff that leaks out of a properly used elf.

>>55323460


Elves use permaculture food forests. They prefer simple minimalist cookery. Nuts take the place of grains, and fruits are common, as are herbier forest vegetables. Unlike humans and dwarves, elves aren't as worried about perishability. Something is always in season, even in winter. Sauces, chutneys, and jams are common, though, to take up the excess harvest. Like dwarves, elves mostly hunt their game, but the meat is more of a side dish than a centerpiece. Some elvish communities are vegetarian. They prefer spiced wildberry wines, which to other palates come off as sweet and delicate rather than strong. Some aged wines are are very complex, and elves have techniques for small-scale distillation of brandy. Elves make nut loafs and nut flour bread, usually sweetened with honey and dried fruit, for travel rations. They're excellent if somewhat minimalist cooks, but a typical elven meal is consumed right off the tree. Elves grab a bite here and there all day, rather than sitting down to a formal eating time. The exceptions are when traveling or on feast days.

Sea elves tend to favor fish prepared as what we would call sushi, alongside sea vegetables and local fruits/vegetables from the coast.

>>55320444
"The Codex Astartes is a set of rules. They guide us. Shape us as Ultramarines. Teach us how to hold duty and honor sacred above all. But how we live with those rules is the true test of a Space Marine."

>>55323650
>Sea elves
It's always a shame so little thought is given to the diets of aquatic humanoids. Yeah, no shit, they'd eat a ton of fish and seaweed. But how would they prepare the food, given they can't use fire, one of the utmost essentials of almost every form of cuisine would they really just eat everything raw?

Which fantasy creatures would be food staples?

>>55324478
Okja

>>55324478
Giants

>>55324478
Shmoo

>>55320135
Honey doesn't spoil as long as you seal it. We've found honey in Egyptian tombs that was still edible.

Combine that with a lack of large swaths of farmland, and mead is one of your best options.

Strikes me that the climate zone, available ingredients etc. would generally be more important than the race, considering how limited the supply of ingredients really is, and how typically climate zones play a huge role in whether food is spicy or hearty.

>>55321970
What if they only eat the mosquitoes after the mosquitoes fill up on blood? Like, a vampire could go from straight from the tap on somebody, but it would be a normal human like eating a raw potato.

>>55324357
Thermal vents

>>55319722
While there were first posted here as rations, I believe they are actually tavern meals. IT would explain some of the questionable food choices, as well as the money.

>>55325240
I wish some brilliant chefanon with too much time on their hands would make two such lists for each race - one for a "ration", or basic food like that, and one with "gourmet" food or "food they would most enjoy to be served if they could have anything from their cuisine".

>>55324819
Ok, but how do you get the honey? It takes a lot to make mead

Focusing more on usual habitat, less on reinforcing the usual tree-French and green-Mongol ideas:

Elvish cuisine is unexpectedly primitive and rough-and-ready. When every man, woman, and elfling lives in an impossibly lush garden, yet waste is an affront to nature, elf meals are likely to resemble the best human peasant food you've ever had: someone centuries older than your grandmother, with access to an herb and spice variety that would make Earth's Punjab blush, doing his best to make every part of a garden vegetable shine using only Prestidigitation and the odd piece of windfall wood as fuel.
The flipside is that Elvish prepared foods are prepared for serious emergencies only. Humans tell tales of how incredibly nourishing lembas bread is; what humans don't know is that it uses a lesser version of the magic woven into a bag of holding to instead hold a pound of vegetable shortening-acorn flour roux in each slice.
TYPICAL ELF MEAL: Vichyssoise, stir-fried leek greens with garlic and pepper, dal with acorn flatbread. Served with rainwater garnished with mint.

Dwarves are a culture of good wine and rice wine - grapes and rice growing better on terraced hills than barley, and grape wine aging far better than ale - and excellent "sea"food. Do not ask your dwarf chef why the delicate bisque contains almost entirely leg meat and no claw meat. It's safer for your SAN if you assume than the claws are reserved for elites.
Red meat, conversely, is almost entirely unheard of, with mushrooms forming the bulk of protein as the few goats are bred for cheesemaking.
TYPICAL DWARF MEAL: Cave centipede and mushroom doria, Iceland moss and fern salad with wine vinaigrette, brandy digestif. Served with sake or white wine.

>>55325553
>Ok, but how do you get the honey?
Dwarves would probably just buy it from elves and humans.

>>55325611
...Which would be extremely expensive in the amounts they'd need...

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PLUMP

HELMETS


on a more serious note, i've always imagined dwarves using a wide variety of fungi, cultivated inside old mines shafts and the like, coupled with eidable moss and lichens. i would guess cattle like yaks would be vital, as source of dairy, cheese and regular meat. they would also be used for labour, and then the tough meat would still be taken care of in the form of long-stews and ground into sausages. a special strain of barley fit for growing in mountainous regions would be the staple cereal. chickens and goats would also be common, as would wild produce and game, limited by where the dwarves are located.

a common dwarven meal would be polypore and work ox stewed in cream and ale, with a loaf of barely bread on the side to dip.

>>55325682
And? They're dwarves. They have hoards of gold large enough to attract dragons.

>>55325602
>Elvish cuisine is unexpectedly primitive and rough-and-ready.
>with access to an herb and spice variety that would make Earth's Punjab blush
Wut
>rice growing better on terraced hills than barley
Wut

You're just changing things for the sake of changing things without having much understanding what you're changing
>>55325709
And every single dwarf, from the king to the lowliest miner, has equal access to that hoard? Not to say they can't but you're making a lot of assumptions here and totally ignoring how cuisine normally develops

>>55325742
And you're assuming that it's the lowliest of dwarves doing the brewing for themselves, and not for their lord or a trade baron or something, who has the funds.

>>55325768
Then how do the lowliest of dwarves get their mead? Are you saying the lords selling it back to them with another markup on top of everything somehow makes it more accessible to average dwarf?

>>55325602
Most humans' first exposure to orc cuisine was deeply interwoven with their first exposure to orcs - the war parties of heavy infantry who swept in from the west were almost bereft of pack animals of any sort, and relied on carrying small amounts of potent spices to make any sort of booty palatable. As they swept over rich farmlands, they were quick to adopt a rolling-forage strategy of keeping entire herds on the march, slaughtering the increasingly-gamy meat as needed; thus the raiding orc's cuisine, and later the specialty of those who stayed behind after the war, is heavy on quick barbecue and intense curries, served alongside farmer's cheese with heavily-spiced whatever-green and whatever-legume pastes.
TYPICAL "ORCISH-RESTAURANT" MEAL: Bowl of goat curry, plank-baked quick flatbread, sag paneer, served and balanced with kumis.

>>55325742
You're mad that I'm posting what they could actually grow where they live in a typical setting, rather than excuses to project your RL stereotypes.

>>55325813
You do know how production and economics works right? Yes mead, since it's dependent on an import, would be expensive to produce and even more so to acquire, but to assume that a lowly dwarf tradesman or even serf would never touch a bottle of it is silly. Almost as silly as assuming that every dwarf is an alcoholic.

>>55325846
>You're mad that I'm posting what they could actually grow where they live in a typical setting
>Black pepper in a temperate forest
Do you know anything about agriculture? Or what "rough and ready" means?
>>55325882
No one is arguing that it's literally impossible for there to be a single bottle in the entire mountain. I'm saying the idea that it's their staple alcoholic beverage doesn't hold up to scrutiny

>>55325924
>I'm saying the idea that it's their staple alcoholic beverage doesn't hold up to scrutiny
Maybe it is, and they just don't drink as much as we stereotype them to.

You should go read up on ancient Greece and the role they played in the early Bronze Age.

>>55325924
>doesn't hold up to scrutiny
You do know what caused the Opium Wars, right? Or why the British took India?

>>55325924
>autismoscreeching about black pepper
>which i never mentioned
not even sure if you lack all perspective and you're quibbling about the quarter-teaspoon of bittering agent in half a gallon of vichyssoise, or if you're so flyover you've never had stirfried leek and think "pepper" there meant "heaping amounts of black pepper" rather than "a few hawksclaws"

>>55325553
Cave bees dumb ass

>>55326538
I could see that. The "gold" hoards dwarves have are actually catacombs of honeycomb. And the little men ride giant wasps into battle. The royal family sees to the health and well being of the queen bee, who's own heirs are raised by the heirs of the royal family.

>>55323500
>if you ask which one of them want icecream, both of them say "yes"
I thought I was the only one going around still making that reference.

Sauce on pic?

>>55324357

You can use acid (vinegar or citrus) to "cook" raw fish. By which I mean setting the proteins rather than killing bacteria. Honestly I thought of the lack of fire and didn't know what more to say.

>>55324478
Dire cattle.

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>>55329876
Homie don't fuck around.

Did I miss the post where some anon mentioned that dwarves would probably eat giant cave spiders? Cause I feel like that should've been said already. After all fried tarantula is a thing. I hear it tastes like tiny crab and giant spiders are sure to be found on the outskirts of any dwarven settlement

>>55319722
>>55325240

It's not rations, it's the sort of food you could buy at a public house or a baker's and eat for the day, a tradesmen's lunch.

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Dwarves tend to farm in high mountain valleys, highly defensible and easily closed off by fortification. Apple trees grow well on the windward side of these mountains, and goats can handle well the steep hillsides. Carrots, parsnips, turnip and onion grow well there as well.

Dwarven settlements tend to be stable and look to the future. Pickled vegetables, hardy dry sausages and hard cheeses predominate the dwarven diet and fresh food is a rare luxury.

This is because of the dwarven drive to always maintain deep, long term stocks of food, alcohol and ammunition. Dwarves always eat their oldest food first to maximize the amount of time the stockpile will last.

This is not to say dwarves have no fine foods. Delicious stews produced from pickled vegetable and hard sassage are in demand in cosmopolitan, mixed-population cities at "authentic" dwarf resteraunts, and dwarven delis attract customers of many races.

>>55324478
Oozes. I'll grant, it takes a mad bastard to prepare and cook them, but they're delicious and about as portable as a healing potion or canteen of water.

>>55325846
>TYPICAL "ORCISH-RESTAURANT" MEAL: Bowl of goat curry, plank-baked quick flatbread, sag paneer, served and balanced with kumis.
..Orcs are Indians?

>>55331405
The "invaders invading invaders invading invaders" thing has potential, but mostly I'm just at a loss for other cuisines which with the "we don't know what animal we're roasting, what tubers we're stewing, or what greens we're chopping tonight, but we know exactly what spice mix will be great on them" factor that clicks so well with my image of orcish raiders.

It's also an excuse for copious amounts of hot peppers (which dry well, travel well, and grow well in the kind of shitty unproductive drought-savannah that's both the standard post-Warcraft orc homeland AND the plausible reason that they'd all be raiding) and a fervent pork adulation-taboo.

>>55322613
Jewish cuisine is actually pretty interesting. First, it's so varied you got to specify which subtype you mean since there were Jews everywhere and they generally adopted a lot of the local sptaples (but I see you already got that covered since your pic is labeled "Ashkenazi Cuisine"), but beyond that, it's informed by both Jewish religious laws and poverty in ways that sometimes produce interesting results.

(and yes, I said poverty. Despite the stereotype of the rich banker Jew, statistically speaking throughout most of history most Jews everywhere were shit poor).

A good example of this is how Middle Eastern Jewish cuisine uses eggplants for everything. Why? Because it tastes kinda meaty, but it's not meat, so you can put it in your dish without being forbidden from adding yogurt. Or how the Ashkenazim learned to squeeze every last tiny bit of nutrition from every last disgusting organ of a chicken or fish because that's what they could afford for their good dishes and they never had the easy poorfag out of using pork.

>>55319902
style and theme usually trump logic

its about the look and feel of the food matching the feeling the writer wants to convey for the race

do dwarves eat tons of meat, despite the lack of pasture underground, because it evokes viking long halls and feasts as well as the rustic style of cooking chunks of meat on a spit

>>55319059
dwarfs eat roots and rat meat, elves eat roots and berries

>>55331884
I've always found American-Jewish food an interestingly odd intersection of clashing cultures, with German food, American beef and the occasional middle eastern item that almost seems to come out of left field.

And of course, shitty fucking wine.

>>55332264
>shitty fucking wine
Isn't Jewish wine supposed to be ludicrously strong because they're literally required by their religion to get smashed on certain occasions?

>>55332278
Only on Purim. The wording of the mitzvah (obligation) can be translated to English as "[one] must drink until [they] do not know how damned is Haman from how blessed is Mordecai."

In other words, drink yourself into oblivion.

(this sounds bizarre unless you know the cultural context behind what is essentially a joke: in Hebrew, the words "damned is Haman" and "blessed is Mordecai" have equal gematric value. Jewish scholars are trained to think in gematria, constantly associating and converting numbers and letters. This is why one who was shitfaced drunk might make the confusion)

>>55325611
>A key staple is entirely imported

>>55325709

Yeah, *hoards*. If they were buying that much basic foodstuffs from outsiders, the gold wouldn't be in their treasuries for long.

>>55332319
But anon, if Jews are always thinking of the comparative value between different objects, eventually if identical, isn't any alcohol enough to confuse the differences?

>>55332360
Evidently not.

>>55332319

You're supposed to get drunk on pesach as well.

>>55332278

Not super strong (alcohol) super sweet. Like, sickly sweet.

>>55332360
Gematria assigns each letter in the Hebrew alphabet a numerical value and the value of every word and sentence is calculated by performing mathematical operations on its constituent letters. The only reason it "works" in the first place (assuming you believe in gematria, of course) is because any number of words or sentences could have the same numerical value. That's why whenever a new president of the US is elected Jewish scholars all over the world begin jumping out of the woodwork declaring them to be the Messiah/that they'll destroy the world because their name shares gematric value with some obscure biblical reference. You'd have to be way more than a little tipsy to confuse a blessing for a mythological hero (Mordecai) with damnation of a mythological villain (Haman) just because they share value.

>>55332415
Some of that shit's nuts. I knew a guy once who had his name changed as a baby because a rabbi told his parents the name they originally gave him was an awful idea since it shared gematria value with the Hebrew word for death or something.

I know we tend to think of orcs as nomadic barbarians but given the massive populations they have to sustain, shouldn't they have some of the most efficient agricultural systems in the world?

>>55332697
That's also why I specified "Orcish-restaurant" food rather than Orcish for mine, and part of why I really like the idea of drawing on Indian cuisine (regional cuisines for the homelands).

meatbread is of course a staple of all races. truly the /elegan/tg/entleman/ of food

>Deep Porridge
This is an unappetising looking dark brown, highly viscous paste that naturally occurs deep underground. Although similar to mud both in consistence and appearance, it is in fact edible and tastes like salted licorice. While certainly an acquired taste, it can become almost addicting. Dwarven experts agree that it most likely has similar origins to fossil fuels. Deep porridge is widely used as a source of sustenance by miners and is sometimes even exported to the surface as the most mineral-rich food in existence, with 1 kilo containing a monthly dosage of minerals. Overconsumption can lead to adverse effects such as crystals sprouting from the skin.

>Imp Eyes
Eye-like bunches of berries. Grown in medium sized, thorny shrubs that can be found anywhere near lakes and rivers. Their small, vibrantly yellow flowers bloom twice a year, for two weeks. These flowers make an excellent condiment when grinded and sprinkled on meat and broths, and can be used as a potent soporific in fermented infusions.

The fruit fully ripens soon after the blooming, when they "open their eyes". The flavor is bitter, but extremely alcoholic, and because of that is highly valued as the main ingredient in brewing. A grown man can usually be intoxicated by consuming a handful. Children like to stealthily feed them to horses and see the results when their owners come back.

Druids consider them sacred to their serpent-headed goddess and ritualisticaly consume them in the form of a drink prepared with seven different herbs and the urine of the high druid while in the form of a humanoid snake. During the ceremony, unstable magical effects tend to warp the surroundings. Participants may become wrapped in an aura of wild glory, receiving prophetic visions while in a trance, and sometimes the goddess herself might manifest through her gathered followers, connecting their spirits and minds as they transform into dancing, glowing lights rising up to the sky.

>>55319272
don't forget to add beer to the dwarf-recipe.

Mushrooms are important, also a lot of cavebugs and snails that are probably served like seafood.

>>55323110
GARLIC SAUCE

I know that this is a bit of a holy cow and god forbid dwarfs not be an entire race of movie!Gimli, but would they really drink so much alcohol? I mean, they have direct access to underground water sources which tend to be a lot purer than the parasite filled slime people would drink alcohol to avoid (what with there not being as many goats shitting in it), while conversely it seems like it'd be pretty hard for them to grow a lot of things that make good alcohol. What if instead of doing mental acrobatics to see how they could distill vodka from cave lichen because THEY HAVE TO DRINK SOMETHING, THEY'RE DWARFS, they just didn't drink a lot?

>>55333537
because heavy drinking scots/celts are a thing, so having an uncouth dorf taking a swig would help reinforce thw notion that they are coarse and unrefined folk north of the Hadrian wall

>>55333537
For a lot of people it's definitely the dwarf holy cow, but for me it's more how good caves are for aging wine and good liquor, plus how suitable alcohol is as a long-long-loooooooong term calorie store for when you decide it's time to just pull the magma lever and dig out next decade when the kobolds have lost interest.
Alcohol lamps are also a thing, so distillation's in general one of the best ways a tunneling race can settle in for the long haul.
And of course, alcohol is a diuretic so access to good clean water is a requirement for pounding straight liquor (or even straight wine) rather than an argument that it shouldn't happen.

Now, WHAT they drink, or whether we don't have teetotaling prarie squats and blotto cave knife-ears, that's a good angle to play with.

>>55333537
Fucking this. People cling to that stupid notion even though it makes zero sense because "what do you mean dwarfs aren't drunkards? Why not just make a new race for your setting, you stupid hipster?"

You know what dwarfs would be drinking all the time? Tea. They'd be drinking fucking tea. What do cultures generally tend to do when they can't figure out how to make good alcohol to make water safe to drink? Boil the shit out of it. So they'd already have that going.

No, you got a culture that frowns on wasting time, humor and fun and is only concerned with efficiency. Mines to dig, gold to smelt, tools to forge. Work, work, work. Would these guys really approve of people pissing away their time drunk? Brawling in public? Making a nuisance of themselves? Or would they rather everyone be drinking copious amounts of fiendishly strong tea, boiling hot and packed with caffeine, so they can work longer and better?

There's no "fun" involved in tea making. You don't get to merrily dance on the grapes, you don't get to get buzzed off the fumes in the brewery. It's backbreaking labor from start to finish and autistic precision to treat the leaves just right. Then, you get a drink that's makes you energetic and alert instead of hit on the nearest orc.

Dwarfs cities won't have pubs (they might even have prohibition going on) and drunks would be looked at as the scum of society. No: every dwarf would have a huge ass samovar at home, and they'd drink cups of heart-attack-inducingly-strong tea four times a day so they can maximize their time in the mines.

>>55333696
>a campaign about raiding dwarf speakeasies
Yes please

>>55333696
I kind of read the dwarf "hard-working technowizard" reputation like the Japanese "hard-working technowizard" reputation.

Someone over in Shaft C, 50 years ago, invented a new and fabulously efficient smelting method.
For the first 30 years your entire race got disgustingly rich to the point where, while you still had to dig, your average mid-level dwarfette pick-sharpener was clearing a bottle or two of Dom Perignon a night yet still keeping up the motivation to go to work and earn an orc's yearly salary the next morning.
Then the kobolds discovered how to pull almost the same smelting trick, with only five or ten deaths a week. And of course, the humans don't give a fuck if kobolds die.
So for the past 20 years, you've just been passing all that money around between yourselves pretending everything is okay. You have to stay at work until your boss leaves because you know any visible stoppage is an excuse to fire, even as ingots pile up in the new warecave dug next to the old warecave after it filled - instead you stare at the vein while never swinging, taking regular swigs from your flask to keep the monotony from killing you. Your boss has to take you out drinking on his dime after because he knows any sign that the company needs to cut back would be taken as "the end is near" and everyone would scatter, leaving him fired for having no one to manage.

>>55319828
That food looks delicious. The only thing missing is potatoes and some whale and then it would be a perfect fit for traditional Nordic foods.

>>55321647
If there is lava in their caves then they can use it to grow some plants.

>>55334089
I don't think you should settle near lava under most circumstances. Even the meme "we so hardcore, we frolick near the lava rivers" Icelanders TRY to avoid it.

>>55333811
Dwarves always struck me as more German than Japanese, simply because they seem to have a keen ability to invent new mechanical wonders in most settings. The Japanese don't work too well for Dwarves in my opinion because Japanese tend to have 1 guy come up with something new and fresh, and then the rest of the country spends the next 7-12 years just copying the formula and refining it to be the best of it's formula even though the rest of the world found the formula dull and have dramatically changed the formula to make it all around better.

Example: DRPGs.

>Dwarves
Rocks

>Elves
Photosynthesis

If your fantasy races aren't going to be weird and inhuman, might as well be human. That extends to diet.

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Needs more fantasy food art.

>>55335911
Now I just wish I knew what any of this was. For all I know it could be anything from delicious steak with mushrooms to some kind of fantastic "roast medusa head snakes in mandragora sauce".

>>55335820
I hate people like you. We get it, your setting is weird. It's gonzo. It's wacky. Not Your Average Tolkien Fantasy! I'm gonna find your races sooooo weird!

Go fuck yourself.

>>55335952
In fairness, /tg/ can't whack off enough to Talislanta and that game's TAGLINE was "No Elves!".

>>55319059
C'mon buddy, everyone knows this. Dwarves eat rocks, elves eat trees, orcs eat each other and gnomes eat whatever is stocked in human pantries.

>>55336403
>gnomes eat whatever is stocked in human pantries
Wouldn't those be the halflings?

>>55319808
Do people gobble down ginger roots as is?

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>>55319059
>Not making your Elves sadistic maneaters
Hint: they steal babies in the night for a reason.

>>55336816
Elves are almost universally depicted as being older than humanity. Their diet can't be based entirely on human babies. They must've eaten SMOETHING before then.

>>55336816
Elves are sadistic maneaters, but it's goblins that steal babies. Do you even Dwarf Fortress?

>>55319059
As we know, giants subsist primarily on mammoth cheese and sabertooth tigers.

>>55337429
I swear one time I dropped ones of those cinnabun thingies on the ground near one and it picked it up.

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High Elven Fine Dining coming through.

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>>55338545

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>>55338575

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>>55338599
>for when immaculate rectangles are too gauche

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>>55338647
organic free range weeds for extra purity

Not my setting, but I'm planning on running an Exalted campaign set in a homebrew city in the middle North. I've been trying to flesh out the culture of the city of Icebank and its neighbours, and this thread has gotten me thinking about the food there.

For those who aren't familiar with Exalted, the middle North has a cool, temperate climate, with mild summers and fairly harsh winters.

Icebank is a trading port located on a large river, so a lot of their local food comes from irrigated farms or the river itself, and plenty of goods get imported from downstream as well. Their staple grains are barley and rye. Both are made into bread, with barley also being used for noodles and beer. Icebank has plenty of water, so stews and sauces are quite common. Hardy root vegetables like turnips and potatoes are popular, as are onions, garlic, and related vegetables. The most popular leaf vegetables are cabbage and spinach.

Not a lot of spices grow in the area; juniper, caraway, and fennel are the most popular in Icebanker food, because they're some of the few that they can grow. The upper class of Icebank, especially mortal merchants, enjoy using imported spices from the lands to the south. The ruling Dragon-Blooded, however, tend to favour more traditional local food, as they don't want to be seen by their peers as adopting Realm culture. The Icebanker Exalted view their independence as a cornerstone of their identity.

Fruit includes a number of different berries, particularly raspberries (Icebanker raspberries have a particularly good reputation in the region), and a few tree fruits like apples, cherries, and plums. Fruits are preserved for the winter by using jams made from beet sugar.

The most common animals are sheep and cattle. Both are rarely eaten, as they're more valuable alive than dead; sheep for their wool, cattle for pulling ploughs, and both for their milk.

>>55339278
Wouldn't they fish?

>>55339278
As Icebank is on a river, fish and other aquatic animals are of course a huge part of the diet. Preserved fish is relatively rare, as fishing can happen year-round. Any fish that are dried or smoked are usually meant for export. Fish are always caught upstream from the city itself; offerings to the god of the river are made by floating them downstream, so the fishermen fish upstream to avoid catching offerings and offending that powerful spirit. Crayfish and freshwater clams are a regular sight on Icebanker tables as well.

What little meat the Icebankers eat, on the other hand, is usually preserved. Commoners usually only get to eat fresh meat at festivals, while most fresh meat the Dragon-Blooded eat is game caught on their frequent hunting trips. Fresh mutton and beef is mostly eaten by wealthy mortals outside of feast days.

Dried or salted meat is usually used more as a flavouring ingredient than the main part of the meal; fish and cheese are the most common primary sourced of protein in the Icebanker diet.

The most common drinks in Icebank are beer, cider, and mead. In years with good harvests, excess grain is made into whiskey; three families in Icebank, one largely Dragon-Blooded and two mortal, still keep the secrets of distillation. Drinks that can't be grown in Icebank's climate, but can be grown not too far south, such as wine and tea, are common drinks for the rich and occasional drinks for most. Chocolate and coffee, on the other hand, are rare even among the wealthy.

>>55339356
I was typing >>55339504 when you asked that.

Icebank's neighbours, of course, have their own culinary traditions. On the rivers upstream, the food is similar to Icebank's, though generally simpler, as the smaller towns and villages don't have as ready access to Icebank's markets.

The bearfolk of the mountain forests are primarily hunter-gatherers, supplementing their diets with small plots of root vegetables. The Winter Folk of the high peaks subsist on the usual Fair Folk diet of human souls, supplemented with strange, exotic fairy foods that grow only in the glittering ice-caves of the Northern freeholds. Fruit that smells of loss and tastes of forbidden love, wine made from vines watered with ancient oaths between bitter enemies, and other strage, abstract foods are frequently offered to warm-bodied visitors from the lowlands. How much must be eaten not to affend the hosts is the subject of centuries of tradition and folklore, and the yearly visit to the frozen palace's of Icebank's fae "allies" is one of the most dangerous annual rituals.

Dwarf:
> Weird dietary restrictions
> Falafel
> Couscous
> A surprising amount of chickpeas
> Boiled wine
> Pretty good pastries
> Bug and oil-based drinks

Orc:
> Meat-based dishes with sides of root vegetables
> Often uncooked and wind-dried
> Excellent barbecue and rice-based dishes
> Drinks are effectively alcoholic gogurt

High elf:
> Lightly tortured humanoid meat, served raw and minced
> Only the FINEST vegetables which have been CULTIVATED for GENERATIONS in the Forbidden Gardens of El'uekain!n by BLIND SLAVES to preserve their FRESHNESS and PURITY
> Garnished with cocaine and LSD while a pleasure demon plays dissonant flute music
> Provided with a side dish of faerie meat, which consists of two pixies that fight each other for your amusement and the loser gets eaten
> Then the winner gets eaten as dessert

Dark elf:
> Nothing: It's What's For Dinner

Undead:
> Torture a human until you feel better about being undead
> Monologue about how human food no longer sustains you and now only suffering and misery can fill you with vigor, etc., etc.
> Rinse and repeat until you get bored of torture

Catfolk:
> Largely revolves around chopped liver
> Looks like cat food
> Smells like cat food
> Tastes like cat food
> Is 99% cat food

Goblin:
> Will give you diabetes, if you ever get to eat it
> Gyro is central dish
> Rice pilaf, yogurt, couscous, honey, pita are all staples
> Goblins love stuffing things inside of other things, so sandwiches of all kinds are common

Human:
> Stir fries, noodles, meatballs, salads, ravioli, roasts, sausages, essentially pre-Columbian European cuisine if it had been smashed into Chinese cuisine at the speed of a galloping horse
> Criticized by orcs for being overcooked, catfolk for being too sweet, goblins for being too derivative, undead and high elves for not being cruel enough, and dwarves for eating shellfish
> Dark elves prioritize the enslavement of human cooks because of their exceptional skill and higher than average BMI scores

>>55335820
>hurr durr my fantasy race is unique
fuck off faglord.

>>55339816
Greg Stolze did go with "elves don't need to eat" for his extremely neat little fantasy setting Ardwin (which is many ways about trying to provide a sort of semi realistic framework for a traditional fantasy setting). They're not photosynthetic, they're explicitly magic. They just don't need to eat and drink at all. This is how elf society got so advanced before everyone else - they never had to spend their time acquiring food, which is what most members of most societies throughout most of history had to spend most of their time on. Elves have always been able to dedicate almost 100% of their time to self-improvement or leisure or art and philosophy and what have you.

They also LOVE lording this fact over the races that do need to eat. The only thing they love more is to make fun of them for having to use the toilet.

>>55339577

Crap. I can't believe I forgot birds. The one kind of meat that common Icebankers do have regular access to is waterfowl, especially duck. Duck eggs feature in a number of Icebank dishes as well; in particular, an omlette made from white fish and duck eggs, served with cider, is a very traditional fisherman's lunch, to the point of being stereotypical.

>>55339891
I have nothing against different elves or dwarves. It's when those differences are only different for the sake of being different.

>>55339790
Any particular reason for the dwarf cuisine beyond an obvious desire to turn them into Israelis?

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>>55319272
>They also invented barbecue sauce.
I approve of this message.

>>55340075

Humanoid civilizations are roughly based on language families. Orcs and other greenskins all speak Turkic and Mongolic languages and are semi-nomadic when they aren't ruling settled civilizations and getting Sinicized in the process. Humans all speak Indo-European languages and so have a King-Arthur-in-Sanskrit feel to them. The various elven races have been put through a Finno-Ugric blender and given various linguistic tweaks to turn them into mutant Estonians-by-way-of-Hell. Dwarves and their offspring (which include catfolk, warforged, etc.) are inspired by cultures that speak Afro-Asiatic languages, and those influenced by them.

So the warforged are inspired by Islamic Golden Age-era automatons, catfolk are inspired by Vaudeville entertainers and characters from the Progressive Era, and the dwarves themselves have a grim next-year-in-Jerusalem-with-pickaxes feel to them.

>>55340221
>Islamic Golden Age robots.
I need to know more about this setting.

>>55336495
Halflings are just manlets so technically yes

>>55336495
What's the fucking difference.

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>>55340340

I'll give you the bullet points.

> 2nd Era is ruled by empire of dwarves who are technologically inclined
> Quickly reaches a 1930s level of technology, with railroads, ships, zeppelins and dropships
> Also constructed entities called jazari, which are mechanical humanoids inhabited by an animating spirit
> Different from golems, in that golems are animated by an elemental, while the spirit in jazari is colorless and pure animus
> Most jazari are little better than slaves, but dwarves start to notice flicker of self-awareness in some of them
> At the end of 2nd Era, dwarves accidentally drill a hole to the Abyss while trying to expand their empire
> Jazari get passed over during the apocalypse, since the initial psychic explosion kills or drives insane only thinking creatures, and demons think jazari aren't as much fun to murder as living beings
> They get ignored as the world descends into a carnival-like atmosphere of depravity and destruction
> 30 years later, hole is plugged, but entire world is fucked
> 98% of the planet is depopulated, 50% of the survivors are so twisted by Chaos that they're mutated and insane, and the remaining survivors are mostly humans who were freshly conquered by the dwarves and didn't understand the tech used to subjugate them
> Whole cities of the old world get swallowed by sand, with the jazari still working in them, still building, cleaning and compiling knowledge in airtight buildings
> Over time, jazari finally get the blood and cum stains out of their research facilities, and start to preserve their own memories, to the point that they can be considered sentient
> Believe the acquisition and preservation of knowledge from the old world to be a sacred duty, and develop idiosyncratic personalities
> 1300 years later, jazari emerge in a human-dominated world that thinks unsanctioned technology and dweomercraft is what puts demons in your brain

I've had a couple players play jazari so far. It's been fun.

>>55332264
And Chinese food, because as long as you avoid pork or shellfish, Chinese food is generally kosher because they don't cook with dairy.

This came from the fact that for a time, the Jews and Chinese were the two largest immigrant groups in the US, and neither were liked by the native populace, so they grew an affinity for each other. It's part of where the "Jews have chinese food and go to the movies on Christmas" cliche comes from (the other part is simply that chinese restaurants and theaters are 2 places that don't close on Christmas)

>>55340984
>Chinese food avoiding pork and shellfish
So, eh, rice?

>>55335933
Pretty sure the top one is just an omelette

>>55341056
Or beef/chicken meals

>>55340842
Thank you. That's certainly some interesting ideas. I especially like the idea of the ancient lost age being 1930s-esque.

>>55341056
They are duck too, as well as beef, various red meats, lamb, chicken and a ton of other shit.
Seriously, China is motherfucking huge and a couple of the areas there are basically completely their own countries speaking completely different languages that just happen to be part of China because the the PROC sat on them after WWII.

>>55332129
Logic is a style in itself though and boy do I like it

>>55320268
in the Magician series, this is basically how the dwarves are. they live primarily under the mountains, but have valley pastures and farms for their herds and crops.

>>55321212
i feel like elves would still keep bees, and encourage fruiting trees to grow, so i would at least imagine them having mead, framboise, brandies and other fruit/honey-based alcoholic drinks.

>>55340984

Chinese and Jewish theology maybe 180 degrees apart, but our ways of thinking and priorities are totally compatible.

>in my setting
Dwarves are known to have little of the urgency to their hunger as other races: they may go for months without eating and never once falter in their vigour or drive. Customarily, Dwarves eat once every 52 days.
In between these times fresh food is difficult to find for any Human that finds themselves travelling through Dwarven territory. Settlements that see a lot of Human thoroughfare may cater to our more frequent need for sustenance, but I advise against counting on Dwarven hospitality.
A great festival is made by the Dwarves of the humble act of dining together, a feast of hearty food and drink for every Dwarf to prepare them for the next 51 days before they may eat again.
As the sun does not shine down here in the Underdark no common fruits or vegetables may grow, and instead strange funghi take their place in the world and on the Dwarven plate. It would be folly to try and draw comparisons between the two as the range of textures and flavours to be found in the various different cultivations are as wide and varied as is found on the surface above. I found myself particularly drawn to a preparation I'm told is made from Sorrow's Fingers -a pale hanging fungus that dangles down from rockface- with an earthy, savoury flavour reminiscent of wild game and roasted carrots.
Of their meat: white flesh dominates the table; roasted snailmeat and spiderlegs, eel-like worms and boiled crabs all served with butter sauce (from the milk of diremoles) and flavoured salts.

>>55344549
At the end of the feast the Dwarves treat themselves to a curious tea I'm told is made from a very particular strain of small blue-capped mushrooms. Its effect on the mind similar to that of wine, but rather unlike wine it seemed to sharpen my senses and attune my thoughts to strange inspirations. After a single cup, I could see dancing lights and vibrant patterns in the black expanse of cave sky, and through a colleague's story I thought myself to be really there, making my way alongside these unknown characters as though they were my friends as much as his through the retelling.

In the days before and following the feast, I was afforded far simpler meals: savoury snail and mushroom stew, served with a spongy grey flatbread made from (I'm told) large grey toadstools that grow from the dung of diremoles and giant insect's carrion.

>>55321647
I just make them more or less German to keep things simple. While they may not expressly live inside of mountains, they do live in the mountains.

>>55325687
That's more or less how dwarf cuisine in my setting works.

Surface-exclusive foods (fruits, especially) are considered fancy delicacies. Dwarves that choose to become surface farmers are given a level of honor and respect on par with war heroes.

>>55319059
Don't halflings literally just eat English food, but more of it?

>>55348110
But does any of it make sense?

>>55333537
My idea is that dwarven alcohol is always very strong and because they do not need to brew for surviving, therefore making small beer is not a thing and all the alcohol is stronger because it is only for taste and getting drunk not for survival like many other places so a human going to a dwarven place getting a beer is not getting a dinking beer but a getting drunk beer

>>55333537
The way I spun it in my setting is that dwarves never invented intentional fermentation - it's considered a crying waste to let food spoil, and dwarves generally frown on harvesting too much and will eat excess food or feed it to the goats (as they usually live on mountain plateaus - their god is considered to dwell inside the highest mountain in the world, so mountain peaks and caves are used for governing, religion and scholarship but never daily business).
When humans introduced them to alcohol, though, the dwarves more or less collectively smacked their lips and agreed to open their borders just for that - it fits with their culture and their constitution, and has taken the place of multiple dangerous herbs and mushrooms in its ritual use as a way to keep people working.

>>55333471
>Beer
Implying dwarves have the necessary external access to wheat, oats, barley, and yeast to make beer. They might have an alcoholic mash but most likely they drink mead because even underground they can handle a beehive.

>>55322925
>Arab use fava beans for falafels while Israel uses chick peas
But Egypt made the falafel, and they've always used chick peas.

>>55352628
The plot thickens

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>>55319059
>Humans
Germanic: simple, rustic, nothing to complex, mostly grains and meat, lots of beer.

>Elves
Southern French/Italian. Heavy emphasis on vegetables and fish, more complex cooking techniques than you can spit at, a wide array of desserts.

>Dwarves
Swiss. Basically a poorer version of human cuisine or "throw shit in a pot because we don't have money for anything better and maybe melt some cheese on top of it if we feel like being fancy".

>Orcs
Southern US. Lots of frying, lots of grilling, very spicy, heavy emphasis on meat (especially steak).

>Gnomes
Some meme cuisine nobody cares about. Maybe Finnish, I can see those gnome fuckers getting excited over salmiakki.

>>55345384

Yeah I split the difference by making them fantasy Swiss, or perhaps Nepalese. Through aching labor they have closed off the passes across the mountains and through into the valleys. So huge regions are isolated from the outside world except by air, Herculean efforts of mountaineering, or of course passages through from within the mountains themselves. Ditto for high altitude terraces used for farming. Huge underground larders provide food even in the face of a sustained attack from the air. Otherwise, the whole interior network of sheltered valleys are better protected than any castle bailey. Dwarven rangers act as foresters and huntsmen, but in addition to tending the valleys they also patrol them for Interlopers. If they catch someone, they find out the route they used to climb in so they can render it unnavigable.

Over time, the largest dwarf empires move entirely underground because they need the surface area for agriculture. But new colonies and smaller settlements I'd imagine start by living in those high valleys. First they seal it off to outsiders, and only then start excavating down and through. When a valley is full, they work on an adjoining one: colonizing it, sealing it off, and then excavating underground access connecting it to neighboring settlements.

I like this because it's also a workable model for how these underground empires spring up in the first place. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to support the workforce while you're building it.

>>55352771
There's really no good human equivalent (which is why those clumsy attempts at forcing every race to be some kind of human nationality doesn't work) because humans don't live underground. Basing them on mountain cultures still won't work because all those cultures live ON the mountains, not IN them.

>>55349346

Square cube law. If they live in English conditions and have English style agriculture, then of course they'll eat English style food. But a creature scaled down by half has a surface-to-volume ratio that means that they need more calories to stay warm for their weight. They need to eat 1/4 the food to support 1/8 the weight, or twice as much food as their size would have suggested.

And that's before metabolic differences by race. Plenty of room for hungry hungry halflings.

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>>55352734
>Salmiakki
Why would someone willingly eat that?

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>>55319059
Not a culinary expert but I always disliked the stereotype that Elves all drink wine and Dwarves slam ale. Pretty sure in LOTR Elven alcohol could make a full grown elephant wasted. I also really like the idea of apple-tini drinking Orcs, or Orcs that don't drink a lot, but that's mostly for comical reasons.

>>55352734
What is that obsession with every race being a national caricature? Do the Swiss live in tunnels? Do the French live on trees? Are Alabamans nomadic beastmen? What do you get from trying to squeeze those round pegs into square holes?

>>55351343

Barley wines also have vastly longer shelf lives. Also dwarves have strong constitutions and probably need more booze to feel anything. Finally, really thick medieval style beers used during fasts were almost syrupy with all the carbs. "Liquid bread" wasn't just an Egyptian thing.

The main issue is access to grain.

>>55352947

IMO that just increases the available land area for pastoralism and cultivation. You're right to be skeptical of trying to jam a whole race into a single cultural template. But it's useful to use them as models, and notice how I used two vastly different but geographically similar nations to inform my thinking.

>>55353097
>What is that obsession with every race being a national caricature?
Because it's easier than designing an entire cuisine from scratch? I'd recommend borrowing from existing charicatures unless you want to go to Tolkien levels of autism, designing an entirely unique cuisine based on the local wildlife and animals, which you would in turn base on the climate and location of their homeland.

>>55353390
*local plantlife

>>55353088

Actually the only mention of drunkenness in middle Earth was in the Hobbit, when the elves got drunk on human-made wine imported from the South. The trade with the south (Gondor? Rohan? Laketown?) was what got the barrels in the river and enabled Bilbo's escape plan.

Miruvor, a cordial made at rivendell, didn't seem to get anyone drunk. If anything, it was quite the contrary.

>>55319059
Dwarf cuisine would be meager as they are not-jew and also live underground. bitter roots and mushroom bread in small bits, they like to soak things in poisons, not only booze but everything that wont kill them outright. They get most of their bulk from booze. Elves would be eating simple yet annoyingly perfect meals, single fruits and vegetables, roasted meat, raw meat. They do live in the forests and seem to worship primitivism.

Orcs are creatures of conquest and slaves and they have tribes everywhere, their cuisine would be varied. They have no written record so its all passed down in oral tradition. no orc cook would make the same meal twice when not serving lower rank orcs or warriors.
Humans and halflings would eat mostly vegetable dishes with a side of rare meat, being mostly agricultural farmers with little else to excel with. Like spicey and sweet things, like, excessively so.

Gnomes eat porridge and skyr, wear pointy hats and have never seen a invention in their long, terrifying lives. They really don't cook much else.

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I'd argue some of the more rougher fantasy communities would experiment with Monster cuisine, especially Feral Orcs, Ogres, and Trolls, though the latter two probably don't have much of a food culture as a "I steal it and eat it raw" culture. But Orcs in my mind would absolutely fry up something like a felled Wyvern or other monstrous creatures. I'd imagine it could range to exotic delicacies prized around the world to horrible messes depending on the education and integrity of the specific Orc tribe. You bet your ass there's some rich noble how spent a fortune importing Orcish Fire Water made from the acid inside the stomach of a young Dragon while thousands of miles away Horag, Tribe Chef boils some Hill Giant back fat to serve to his collegues (with predictable results)

>>55333696
I'm 100% projecting cause I just started reading Pratchett but I really liked how he approached Dwarves in that the rural, natural Dwarves are dour and hard working whereas the City Dwarves who left their home mine are the deplorable, fighting and drinking since fuck, I just spent 85 years of my life in my shithole cave working under my Father as a Blacksmith, and now I'm in the big city and want to drink and punch something.

>>55353453
>boils some Hill Giant back fat to serve to his collegues (with predictable results)
Obesity?

>>55353408
Huh, don't know where I got the notion that Tolkien's Elves were well known for their liquor. Probably something wrong a friend of mine told me years ago that I retained for some reason.

>>55353597

Appears in a lot of wannabe fantasy, including the LotR movies. I reread the series recently and was surprised by this too.

>>55353453

Redneck elves.

This is great.

>>55319059
In my setting:
>dwarf cuisine is "hearty"
You could say that.
They *are* immune to poison.
Dishes: "Meat & Potatoes". They eat hunted meat, raised mutton, and a wild variety of mushrooms and tubers.
Seasoning: Any and all. They are huge fans of spice, herbs, and alcohols in their food.

>elf cuisine is "delicate"
My elves eat fish.
A lot of fish.
In every possible Bubba-Gump permutation of fish, including raw.
Not sure that classifies as "delicate".
They use locally grown seasonings as they they don't trust outsiders with their food.
>gnomes
Don't exist aside from fairy squib that eat like any foraging forest folk.

>orcs
They eat whatever they can.
But they prefer to eat the tender raw flesh from your face, sometimes gently drizzled with butter.

>>55353524

I'm surprised that they're not eating their meat raw. But no, probably not obesity. I'd imagine that orcs are like neanderthals in that their excellent healing factor, toughness, and strength requires way more calories than a human needs. That means meat, large territories for a small tribe, and a raiding/warlike attitude. And probably digestive adaptation to a more (but not exclusively) carnivorous diet.

With so few trying to hold so much land, it's no wonder that humans and others constantly encroach on their territories and end up fighting. A human settler might go several years before the orc tribe works its way back to the area, and would see their defense as an attack. Orcs would then probably stage a retribution raid out of their territory. Kind of the way European settlers saw native Americans as aggressors when really they were trying to hold the large territories they needed for hunting/gathering.

Of course there needs to be a reason that orcs aren't wiped out. Presumably it's a combination of magic, fecundity, and lots of game-rich wilderness that is for some reason untameable.

>>55353221
>The main issue is access to grain.

Yep. Hence the need for terraced agriculture. Yeast isn't a problem, you get your starter cultures just like everyone else.

>>55352246
>They might have an alcoholic mash but most likely they drink mead because even underground they can handle a beehive.

And the bees get their pollen/nectar from where exactly? Anywhere you can imagine wildflowers, I can imagine terraces growing productively. Honey is a reasonable supplement since you need pollinators, but bees can't just sit underground generating honey out of rocks and mushrooms.

Maple syrup might fit, too. Sugar maples need a daily freeze/thaw cycle to draw out the sap. Normally that's a latitude but if the soil/water are right then you can get the same effect from altitude.

>>55352628
>Egypt made the falafel
Them's fightin words mister, there's never been proof of where exactly it came from
also at the time the falafel was invented,
Egypt was primarily Coptic people, not Arabs,
so yes they wouldn't use fava beans

>>55357973
well that was some wierd formatting on my post

>>55320180

Lembas was bread of the sindar, but they learned to make it from their queen, Melian. She was a Maia, an angelic being, not an elf.

Normal elf bread (in Tolkien they had it) was delicious but nonmagical. White and fluffy and rich, like challah or a brioche or panettone.

IMO if elves have bread at all, it won't usually be made from a cereal grain flour. More like a nut flour or something. Milk, eggs... Would elves have enough animal husbandry to manage all this? They might have great recipes for human bread (like a European might learn to make Chinese food) but I doubt if it's Central to the elven life like it is for humans.

Actually dwarf bread would rock. Good grain but not grown in enough volume that they don't take extra care with what they make. Potatoes are a high nutrition, high-altitude food that keeps well and is highly productive per acre. So they'd put potato into their bread, which makes it more moist and nutritious. Plus hard clear mountain spring water is great for baking, especially stuff like bagels. Like dwarf weapons: incredible quality but not made in quantity.

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>>55354045
Despite adhering to clichés, I feel pretty good about my dwarves and elves.
At least my elves have teeth like sharks, like any successful aquatic predator.
Elf chicks look cute and non-threatening... then they smile.

>>55358093
>Would elves have enough animal husbandry to manage all this?

There's no reason to assume otherwise.

>>55361976
Not if they're hunter gatherers.

most of my fantasy settings tend to be set in periods equivalent to either the 30 Years War or the Revolutionary War/Napoleonic War/War of 1812(but with all the usual D&Disms added in), so I get a ton of mileage out of this guy's channel when it comes to food;

https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/

>>55353097
Tolkien did it because he was writing a morality play about how the !English were the best, and fantasy autists stuck with the idea because it confirmed their existing stereotypes/their other genre-founders were Chad the Barbarian or literal feminism by an actual girl.

>>55364693
>Tolkien did it because he was writing a morality play about how the !English were the best
Damn, that's a whole new level of not getting a text.

>>55366694
Apparently Tolkien didn't get his own writing either, then, because he stated as much himself.

>>55366783
Or, more likely, you didn't get his writings about his writings either.

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>>55319059
Elf cuisine is "delicate" 80% of the time because if they devoured the still quivering flesh of human children daily, they'd exhaust the supply in a matter of years.

Stay away from Elvish land.

>>55319772
Fucking 50% of that plate is inedible, christ.
>>55319786
Grasshoppers are meh, looks great aside from that.
>>55319743
Needs more bread/potatoes/filler
>>55319702
That much honey, nty
>>55319669
Bit boring, but sure I'd eat it
>>55319751
LEMME SMASH

>>55323500
> elf milk
> leaks out of a properly used elf.

You mean cum?

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What would a vanara eat