Food and Meals

Meals

Three, and everybody eats them at roughly the same time because the bells say so. Cham is the morning meal at the fourth or fifth bell — in a poor household bread and what was left, eaten standing; anywhere else porridge, eggs, bread and cheese, something smoked or fried, and something hot to drink, boeethae for most people and Thearwy for those who can afford it. Doef is midday at the eighth bell, when the whole city stops for a Maerk or two and the streets fill with people holding food. Oenj is the evening meal and the real one. A wealthy house eats the same three and takes longer over them for company; nobody with anything to do has the time otherwise.

What is actually eaten

Bread is the foundation. Glufri is bought daily by anybody without an oven or a cold place, which is most people, and a working household spends more on it than on anything else; a hard Fuzipic and a loaf is what half the world eats at midday. Fish and Chichei are the everyday meat, and eggs year round. Dorath meat is regular without being daily — a milking female past her breeding years cannot haul either — and a working household buys it for an occasion. Everything else is cheaper: Chiaz, Daell, Aeval, roots and pulses, Grael from the roadside, Kelrei from the cellars. Roeva is hunted, dear, and a gift. Aruna is for the wealthy in the north and ordinary in Eldershore.

Hearth and stove

A hearth boils, stews, and simmers, so a working family eats a Simraun: one pot, everything in it, cooked slowly, eaten for two days — the commonest shape of a meal in the world. A closed stove at two to five Goyl bakes and roasts, and is the first purchase a working family makes when it gets ahead. The wealthy have an iron range with several plates and a slave or a Letwyg to work it.

Preserving

Everything a household will eat between Gaedhr and Eiveil is put by in Abwynd, and the work is enormous: salting and drying, smoking, fermenting for Stoek and for Clearhold's crocks, jars of fruit, pickles, and relishes, and cheese, which is milk preserved. An icebox makes a difference of days; a mechanical cold cabinet changes a household's whole year and almost nobody has one. Stormharbor and Clearhold do this best; Eldershore barely does it at all and finds a northern cellar in Endwr slightly grim.

Where food comes from

Four ways, and nothing has ever combined them. The market, filled each morning from the ring, the boats, and the caravans. The street shops — baker, butcher, fishmonger, dairyman, each on his own corner, each knowing his customers by name. The chandler, the nearest thing to a general shop: oil, salt, soap, candles, dried pulses, preserved goods, spice, and in a Roedhaven rope and nails too. The carts: ice weekly, milk daily, bread in the mornings, and the stalls that feed the midday street. Anything that can spoil is kept cold, and the keeping is visible on purpose — a thermometer on the cabinet door that buyers look at, this being a world where everybody knows what an infection is. What the trade watches is handling: boards and hands washed, raw kept from cooked, nobody Lobaeter near the food. Inspection is done by whoever already inspects. The Iron Coves inspect nothing, and a careful person buys fish there only off the boat.

The cities

Stormharbor: Eats what it has put by. The everyday dish is Haerlchaz — salt Haerl soaked out overnight and cooked down with Chiaz and what fat there is, thick enough to stand a spoon in. Sorstoek comes out of the crock with everything and is admired by nobody. The occasion dish is Bryalkrav, fresh Kravoen meat cooked slowly with Bryla, only when the fleet is home. Outsiders remark on how Sorgrep everything is, and the Nyona poured over it afterward.
Eldershore: A starch and a Sosbo. Ubaensos is pounded Ubaen or Ireis with a long-simmered sauce over it, built on Aruna, heat, oil, and ground seed, eaten with the right hand from a shared dish. The occasion dish is Feisharcwyt, a whole board of Feiruna, dozens of kinds. Outsiders remark on Dajzhoen, the reef fish eaten the morning it is landed, and that the seasoning is layered from the beginning.
Clearhold: Cooks by the clock. Vaeskbach is the everyday food, the fermented grain pressed into a dense flat cake or thinned into the morning porridge. The occasion dish is Talvipic, dried Talvi with fine Baechri cheese and Thearwy at a temperature people argue about for an hour. Outsiders remark on the Expaed Airtaed, the dated crocks, whose pickles are the best in the world, and the Sharcwyt of many small dishes.
Forgegate: Eats richly. Rynexcrip — Taedh fried with Ryn, with bread — every day; Ireisloslo, layered Ireis with meat cooked down all day, cream, cheese, and Aruna in quantity, for occasions. Bread baked against a hot oven, pickles on every table, and Loslogomik, the sweets of Dorath milk boiled down. Outsiders remark on Nyrra in season, and that Forgegate cooks more foreign dishes badly than anywhere else cooks them well.
Shining Reach: The best grain in the north and something complicated done with it. Underneath, plain and good — Aevalbach, roasts, pies, bread. On top, performance: the salon class eats Sospleid, the arranged and sauced course in sequence, with named cooks and dishes that change by season the way coats do. Outsiders remark on the fork, and that a table setting is read as closely as a coat.
The Iron Coves: Whatever came off a ship, and no dish worth a name. The best-stocked kitchens in the world and the worst cooking, since a hold full of Zhael is no use to a cook who has never seen it. Perhaps six cooks in the Coves can make a stolen cargo taste good and are valued accordingly.