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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago

Was brainstorming dishes for a formal banquet in a space opera set 7000 centuries hence, with a bunch of genengineered animals/crops and a buggy LLM translating the story into today's English (so there are no smeerps, only "rabbits").

So far I have:

Azhdarchid biryani
Microquetzal sashimi

(NB: yes they've been resurrecting extinct dinosaur analogues and eating them.)

Any suggestions for posh nobles showing off their kitchen?

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Jeremiah C. Foster 🇸🇪🇺🇸
@jeremiah_@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@cstross Heirloom Mock Turtle soup?
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beasom
@beasom@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross trad. Japanese food is a great source for ideas. I’ve eaten insects; fermented stuff; things made of one thing deliberately made to look like something else, with seasonal motifs and color palettes.

(I swear I was being hazed sometimes as a foreign guest. Sometimes my hosts wouldn't eat some of the things they served me. "Acquired taste" means even other cultural natives won't eat it)

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/eating-bugs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiseki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiokara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D

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Cuprohastes
@Cuprohastes@dragonchat.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Pulled pork made from meat cloned from the bones of saints.
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Bob Beaker
@bbeaker@toot.community replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross It would be a real stretch for the kitchen mechanics but what about an Edible Pot Noodle.
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Merc
@merc@techhub.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Cryptids.

Haggis made from Nessie.

Bigfoot: braised big's feet.

I can imagine posh nobles being hoodwinked by a con man selling supposed cryptids.

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Jaime Robertson
@JamesPadraicR@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Archaeopteryx‘s Tongues in Aspic.
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sdbbp
@sdbbp@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Dye-murex Tyrian Purple Soup
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Justin D-Z
@justindz@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Trilobites already sound like an appetizer.
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Tim Tepaße
@ttepasse@chaos.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Sourdough bread made from a n centuries old sourdough culture which is being kept alive, fed and prayed to by robotic monks.
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Shaun Murrant (☕🧉🍻🏳️‍🌈)
@PilotMoonDog@social.linux.pizza replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross I remember a documentary on Restoration era dining that mentioned hiring a pineapple to use as a display piece, rather than a thing to be eaten. Due to them being recently discovered by Europeans.

Maybe some sort of interesting looking, and possibly horribly toxic, organism as a central conversation piece?

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voidampersand
@voidampersand@sfba.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross foodstuffs that have been aged literally for centuries. A dinner concert where after the performance the musical instruments are served and eaten. Chicken thigh meat from birds adapted to high gravity words would be extra dark and flavorful. Delicate vegetables grown in microgravity that have extra thin cell walls.
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Michkov
@Michkov@mas.to replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Fred Flintstones car flipping mammoth ribs are the first thing that comes to mind. After that Diplodocus tail, or Dodo omelette.
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Rodger Thorm (he/him)
@rthorm@dice.camp replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

AI slop misconstrues various micro organic processes as all the same, basically and thus offers up: shark (hakarl) cheese

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BashStKid
@BashStKid@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Well, there’s the example of William Buckland, the man who ate everything, supposedly regretting only the mole and the bluebottle, with a bit of Louis XIV’s heart as an amuse-bouche.

I suppose rarity (“slow grown in slow time in a family ergosphere”) and taste (“grown to complement currently fashionable glanded drugs”) will still be relevant, although the second one is a tad derivative.

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Inlaing
@inlaing@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross lol, just binge watch chefs table for inspo and switch out the proteins
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AspiringLuddite
@AspiringLuddite@medievalist.masto.host replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

Cockatrice was a thing c. 15th century, with sewing together different critters.

So, the idea would be several gengineered creatures, whacked in half and sewed together to make food which even gengineering can't do ...

For bonus points, dress it in peacock feathers.

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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@AspiringLuddite Human centipede time! To feed the coprophage gourmands.
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AspiringLuddite
@AspiringLuddite@medievalist.masto.host replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

It's the circle of life.

For some values of circle.

And life.

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Vincent Waciuk
@waciuk@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross A posh noble wouldn’t know where the kitchen is.
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Moritz Negwer
@moritz_negwer@mstdn.science replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Something mundane that is rare because it will be the *last* of its kind the attendants ever eat. Because it will contain a prion (or a polymorphic compound*) that will inevitably alter the universe to make this specific configuration of food impossible to generate in the future, starting from (the attendants of) this very dinner.

* https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/stalking-polymorphs

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4sphere
@4sphere@mathstodon.xyz replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

Obviously, this depends on what resources are (not) available. Time might be a good one (some recipes take three reincarnations to complete properly -- my family were all brought here so that centuries in the future, this one dish can be used to celebrate the anniversary of X). Tastes will probably have changed, but if the point is to show wealth, that may not matter.

Foods that aren't just fermented but aged (cheese, fermented tofu) -- especially if they're part of the sauce or otherwise not the main focus of the dish, but still noticeable. Mummified meats from previous civilizations (even if you've revived the species, maybe it's still hard to work out what all the aging processes are). Sauces derived from the slow fermentation of ancient plastics (depending on metabolisms) whose exact composition is lost to linkrot.

If there's much space colonization, possibly some delicious fungus evolved in the messes you find in air filtration units, or were created as part of atmosphere maintenance (what good is a life support system if you can't eat every part of it?) You might get centuries old scoby treated like prized sourdough starter.

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Greg Lloyd
@Roundtrip@federate.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

Velociraptor à la presse

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Jon_Alper
@jon_alper@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Land Lobster Thermidor
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@jon_alper You're talking about giant cockroaches, aren't you? Cheese-grilled giant roaches? Mmmm, yummy!
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Jon_Alper
@jon_alper@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Well, I wouldn’t put it THAT way on the actual menu but…
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Neville Park
@nev@status.nevillepark.ca replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross I would also expect a blurring of the lines, or at least a different line, between food and drugs/medicine. Organisms genetically engineered for ecstasy- or hallucinogen-like effects? Changes to metabolism that allow for different foods to be alcoholic?

I'd look back to the Middle Ages when pastry was not meant to be edible but was just a sort of food-safe way of baking and serving the contents. Instead of pastry, maybe some other sort of artificial or natural structure?

More incorporation of insects and other land arthropods! Butterfly-wing garnishes. Dragonfly hors d'oeuvres. Citrusy, crispy ant fritters. Delicate foam served in a suspended spider silk bowl (see e.g. some Linyphiidae).

Inspired by Dracula's Renfield: trophic turducken? Plankton pâte, inside idk some kind of filter feeder, inside a fish, etc.?

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Matt Hardy 3.11 for Workgroups
@technicaladept@techhub.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Well if it's really posh, perhaps as an additional flex the whole meal should have purely mechanical mouthfeel enhancements with none of the usual nutrient cybermatrices. In other words their usual food would be as alien to us a popping candy would be to a caveman and by serving food that we'd just about be able to relate to would be like someone today espousing the benefits of a paleo diet.
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PRW
@prw@mastodon.sdf.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Long-pig baby-back ribs.
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Token Sane Person
@tokensane@mastodon.me.uk replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross How about trilobites with garlic butter. You would have to include the special spork needed to extract a trilobite from its shell in the place setting.
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Log 🪵
@log@mastodon.sdf.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross It's a little bit out of fashion in 700 kyfn (kiloyears from now), but the project from 400 kyfn to 410 kyfn to codomesticate an ant species and a truffle species that self-cultivates a delicacy without supervision and then walks it right into your mouth to be eaten might be a fun throwback.
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Token Sane Person
@tokensane@mastodon.me.uk replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross In "Strata" by #TerryPratchett there is a passing reference to a Dodo Omelett.
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LibertyBeta
@LibertyBeta@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross A single, perfect, free range chicken egg on top of real rice. But all of it is cooked and prepared on a planet that has 1:1 gravitational forces to earth to make sure it’s “Authentic”. Along with Zero-G soy sauce.
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Skjeggtroll
@skjeggtroll@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

S'mores rosted over the embers of a dying star.

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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@skjeggtroll "S'mores" are an American processed food, aren't they? Eminently forgettable over a time scale of fractional megayears.
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Skjeggtroll
@skjeggtroll@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

Sort of. They're basically crackers, chocolate and marshmallows squeezed together and fried over a camp-fire.

But you can always do Dromornis stirtoni eggs fried in the corona of a star on non-baryonic skillet (the tricky part is getting the teflon to stick to neutrinos.)

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Orjan
@cunobaros@mendeddrum.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross I'd go for ridiculously elaborate cooking process. Meat seared in a pan heated by the sun on Mercury (or analog), so the timing must be incredibly exact, then put in stasis and brought back to the nobles' dining table, still sizzling.
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reseauxsansfil 🇳🇱🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🐕🎓
@reseauxsansfil@social.vivaldi.net replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross a light, velvety velociraptor velouté?
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*sparkling anxiety* Evelyn
@Gorfram@beige.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross There should be some exotic combination of gourmet preserves and pastes served on leavened wheat products that, when all the pomp & botheration is dispensed with, turns out to be, in essence, peanut butter and jelly on white.
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Rafael
@ipxfong@mastodon.sdf.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Crappy fast food. Clown Nuggets and King meat kofta sandwiches.
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arrbee
@rogerb@mastodon.scot replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
There used to be a dish comprising several creatures (birds?) of increasing size, served with each being the filling for the next larger.
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@rogerb Turducken. It's a thing today.
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Dan Sugalski
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Vermicious Knishs. Which only exist in the historical record due to a combination of poorly tuned transliteration software and a drunken undergrad prank by an ancient modern children's literature major.

Nobody's entirely sure how they're made or what they're made of, though there are eighteen centuries of recorded dueling monographs (and two actual duels) "vigorously" debating the matter.

The only point of agreement is that they probably almost, but not entirely, don't taste like tea.

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archenemy / Fernando
@archenemy@mas.to replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Dodo Reina Pepiada arepas. humble dish with a decadent twist.
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Gueule d'atmosphère
@gueuledatmosphere@mastodon.green replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
jellied cod tongues preserved in space-time aerogel
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ersatzmaus
@ersatzmaus@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Silphium?
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@ersatzmaus *That* I believe is the subject of active research atm (I gather there are suggestions that it's not actually extinct, but the Romans exhausted their local biome).
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Canageek
@Canageek@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross @ersatzmaus Yeah, they left detailed descriptions and drawings so we've got a pretty good idea of what family it's in. the question is, is there any of that exact species left, one researcher claims to have found a very small amount of it growing wild near Roman colony, but others are skeptical that it's the same species.
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ersatzmaus
@ersatzmaus@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@Canageek @cstross It could be a whole thing in the story. Not so much about the silphium itself, but the patronage of silphium research academics who argue that _your_ version id the One True Silphium.
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Till Westermayer
@_tillwe_@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Depending on eat-abiltiy: platinum glitter?
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acb
@acb@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross If they are sufficiently technologically advanced and decadent, I’m sure they can arrange for some men (or other species) to be mellified in time for the feast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellified_man
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Neville Park
@nev@status.nevillepark.ca replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@acb @cstross @wolfteeth has left the chat
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Σ(i³) = (Σi)²
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Once the nutritional aspect of food becomes obsolete (since the nanoengineered ATP pumps redundantly implanted in four different locations of my body take care of energy supply), eating becomes a purely aesthetic experience; not unlike sex after the reproductive connection has been severed through both contraception and IVF. An experience that will immediately inherit a certain level of vulgarity, not least through its connection to defecation. For a while there will still be toilets in public bathrooms in the same sense in which there's still smoking cabins in certain eastern European trains, but overall eating (like sex) will become something that is enjoyed, if at all, in private - and its public display will inherit the mantle of the uncouth, unclean, even scandalous.
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@SvenGeier That's somebody else's SF future: mine is far more crapsack (sod-all nanoengineering beyond half a million years of applied CRISPR).
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Cornelius K.
@kln@mstdn.io replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Something ortolan bunting inspired perhaps...
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Knud Jahnke
@knud@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

Something that is very mundane in 2025.

I was always fascinated by Salmon and Herring becoming quite expensive fish, when in the olden days there were laws (where?) that Salmon could be served to some workers only 3x/week. And Herring was poor people's food and has become quite expensive now.

So maybe "tenderloin steak" or "soup from naturally grown tomatoes"...

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Graydon
@graydon@canada.masto.host replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Hardtack.

The wheat is _exactly_, genetically, what was grown on Terra pre-spaceflight; the flour is ground by hand using stone querns chipped out with chisels; the oven is made from bricks fired by handmade charcoal from four hundred year old oak trees felled with axes and similarly genetically identical to the pre-spaceflight Terran version; the oven uses different charcoal from a different tree species but also pre-spaceflight.

Hundreds of thousands of effort-years, in other words.

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HighlandLawyer
@HighlandLawyer@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Chillies stuffed with steamed tobacco (garnished with nightshade flowers)- solanaceae is such a useful family.
Psychrolutes fillets avec pomme frites.
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Michael
@mschfr@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Maybe nanobots/gen-tech bacteria that stimulate the taste buds of the guests based on their individual preference?

And you might want to read the roman satire about the feast of Trimalchio as it really is the archetype of a lavish, totally over the top dinner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyricon#Chapters_26%E2%80%9378,_Cena_Trimalchionis_(Trimalchio's_dinner)

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Nemo
@iinavpov@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Wines aged in Europan seas?
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Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
@gsuberland@chaos.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross I feel like they'd resurrect the ancient concept of Perpetual Stew except it'd be made in a special vessel, like a Klein bottle covered in wires, with osmotic filtration and confined β-sterilisation to prevent pathogenesis.
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haihappen
@haihappen@social.anoxinon.de replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross i am boring and would say the LLM interpretation of a turdurken: bioengineered bird that grows a bird-shaped tumor.
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Sesquipedality
@sesquipedality@mendeddrum.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross dinosaur turducken, possibly involving several additional stages.
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Nemo
@iinavpov@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
mollusks found in ultracold climates, that need millenia to grow to a sensible size.
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slowtiger
@slowtiger@berlin.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
NaN bread
Turtles all down soup
Pollocene hen
Black smoker salmon
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dstu
@trurl@mastodon.sdf.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross something like turducken, but themed as a slice across the phylogenetic tree. Eat from every branch of the tree of life with every bite. Or go across history: a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey inside a dodo inside a teratorn inside an iguanodon inside a ... (perhaps up to diplodocus/seismosaurus/...).
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Chris :epcot:
@strangetikigod@worldkey.io replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross archaeopteryx au vin?
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titaniumbiscuit
@titaniumbiscuit@nerdculture.de replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross -
- Carnivorous Tofu-Squid BBQ
- Giant Venus Flytrap stuffed with barbecued Kolibri
- deep-fried Tardigrade pudding with capsaicin lemonade for drinks
- Kolibri shashlik dusted with psychoactive salt
- Sweet Potato Fries
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ysbreker
@ysbreker@idlethumbs.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross mashed potatoes to go with the sashimi.
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Vincenzo
@vincenzovin7@mastodon.uno replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstrosshttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu
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Andrew Crawford
@evermore@mastodon.cloud replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Obviously, there is the Nanofillet ZZ21 machine, which allows one to portion things, adjustable to the micron, based on the optimal gustatory experience of each individual diner (presumably derived from data from their latest medical scan).
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Uilebheist
@Uilebheist@polyglot.city replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross I'm sure one can find a fancy name for "lutefisk in spicy durian sauce".
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Amro has been
@amro@todon.nl replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Roast Brontosaurus Vertebrae Marrow
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Jef Poskanzer
@jef@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross monkey brain feast of your own clone
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@jef Ick! That's a good one, but not what I have in mind.
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Fazal Majid
@fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Veblen’s laws remain valid in the far future, so it would have to be a species that is both threatened with extinction but also impossible to reconstruct (otherwise there is no scarcity value). Substances that are expensive to collect in our time due to labor costs like saffron or vanilla won’t be when robots are commonplace.

I predict some entrepreneurs will find a solution to the problem of supplying Veblen foodstuffs by using intellectual property law to create the artificial scarcity. Cloned human meat of celebrities who granted an exclusive license to their DNA would be a suitably ghoulish option.

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Martha Bridegam
@MBridegam@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@fazalmajid @cstross
Maybe not the celebrity clone meat idea, as I think Samuel Delany did that one -- but otherwise, yes, exactly.
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Obscuredavid
@Cameleopard@mastodonapp.uk replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Lab-grown long pork.
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@Cameleopard Naah, *that* is in principle do-able today (lab quantities only, though).
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sbszine
@sbszine@dice.camp replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross @Cameleopard Making it into a hawaiian pizza, though.
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Mim
@crinolinerobot@beige.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross There's probably some skill required - and a bloody big pot - to boil a dino egg so the yolk is still runny but the white is set.

By that point in time, most of the difficult/time-consuming processes (eg, in centuries past, freezing, fancy sugarwork, or any sort of baking requiring constant or precise temperatures) would probably be made vastly easier by technology, so the showing-off value would be in the rarity of the ingredients rather than the elaborate processes of cooking. Probably a whole mystique gets built around, say, a specific cheese, or a breed of sheep-alike that only lives in the salt marshes of one particularly sulphurous planet, or eggs that have become natural century eggs because the planet the bird lives on has patches of heaviliy alkaline mud and eggs laid there get preserved...

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Fiona Craig
@FionaCraig@mastodon.scot replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Wagyu Megatherium, served in a sauce of it's own fur ecosystem
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Quixoticgeek
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross what's the 7000 years in the future equivalent of a swan?
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@quixoticgeek You missed the duration: 7000 CENTURIES in the future, i.e. 2/3 of a million years. (Our species is extinct by then. We're their australopithecines.)
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Quixoticgeek
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross ah. the classic off by two orders of magnitude problem...

Have they tried raising humans for food ?

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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@quixoticgeek Our species is extinct: post-human hominins have speciated: quite possibly some of them *are* engineered as anencephalic food-beasts, but we're so slow-growing that it hardly seems worth it: pigs are at market weight (around 120kg) in 4 months, while humans take at least 15 years to get there, if ever (that's a *big* dude).
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Quixoticgeek
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross does chocolate still exist ?
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Raph V.
@raph_v@mstdn.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Opabinia tempura
Mosasaurus fin soup
Osso bucco di dinocheirus
Ammonite with garlic butter
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schrotthaufen
@schrotthaufen@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Cloned meat from important historical figures, or celebrities. Anything flambéed with the heat from an artificially induced super nova (fuck the plebs living in, or around, that star system).
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GinevraCat
@GinevraCat@toot.community replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Something akin to the whole stuffed swan fancies of the middle ages https://www.interesly.com/top-12-weirdest-medieval-food/
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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GinevraCat Ah! I need a turducken analog where the largest aviform container organism is a Utahraptor …
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Becca Cotton-Weinhold
@rlcw@ecoevo.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross
Does a Kiwi fit into a 🦤? Pop that into a phorusrhacid and that into the raptor. Stuff the Kiwi with quail and viola the stage is set for the avialutionary matroshka.
@GinevraCat
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Tom
@stealthisbook@nerdculture.de replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross @GinevraCat the trick is to breed a turducken such that the nested organisms grow in a commensal relationship, each extracting specific nutrients from their shared diet so they have complementary flavors in the final preparation
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adamrice
@adamrice@c.im replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross @GinevraCat Charles Phoenix invented the turducken of desserts, the Cherpumple, which is a cherry pie, pumpkin pie, and apple pie, each embedded in cakes, with the cake layers stacked atop each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherpumple

I am reminded of an SF short story I read many years ago which was all about the very rich and very cruel dining on very rare animals.

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Charlie Stross
@cstross@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@adamrice @GinevraCat It's been done—for real: in 1870 during the Siege of Paris, they slaughtered the zoo animals and dined on them.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/paris-siege-eating-zoo-animals

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GinevraCat
@GinevraCat@toot.community replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross OMG YES!
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clew
@clew@ecoevo.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago

The medieval thing where you roast a bird and serve it with its feathers back on?

There’s an amazing luxurious macaroni dish in in Lampedusa’s _The Leopard _, but it’s hard to make moderns hear that as fancy..,

@cstross

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Sam :moomin_hattifatteners:
@ravenbait@mastodon.scot replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Coelacanth caviar?
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Marcus M. 滅拉 マルクス🐧
@mocm@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Aurochs gyudon.
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Sean Reynolds
@saltbaygull@friendsofdesoto.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Gros Michel bananas Foster
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mayhem
@mayhem@social.tchncs.de replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross Xenomorph stew
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George B
@gbargoud@masto.nyc replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross

Creatures bioengineered with spice glands so they get the deepest possible marinade

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James Kemp
@themself@mastodon.scot replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@gbargoud @cstross you could just engineer the muscle cells to produce the spices along with the proteins.

Grow the steaks in a vat and slice off chunks with the seasoning embedded in every cell.

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JWarner
@Jeanniewarner@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross there's a possibility that genetic engineering has crossbred different species for the meat. Finally the D&D players get to eat a basilisk?
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Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
@Lazarou@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@cstross (I thought that's why we were resurrecting dinosaurs....to eat them? 😉 )
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