Food in fantasy is not always something we think about as we’re reading, though, in my opinion, we should be. Food can be an important plot device, an interesting way of explaining your world’s culture, or merely texture, but it is not something that should be overlooked.
Take, for example, Tolkien’s elven bread lembas; a convenient plot device that meant he could take Sam and Frodo through wasteland towards Mordor without having to worry about them starving halfway there, but also a way of telling us more about the elves, and how they were so much different from the hobbits, lending them a mysterious edge.
It can be a bit of a bugbear though; the stereotypical fantasy setting leads us to stereotypical facets of the world, and a whole steaming pot of gruel. Yes, it fits, but it’s not the be all and end all of choices.
There are of course examples of food made interesting, either by way of ostentation, or humour, imagination or simply taking a real world example and making it altogether more magical. In Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora, Father Chains has the boys in his care cooking fantastical meals as they practice for their false-facing; my particular favourites were dishes that were hybrids of different animals, showing skill in matching flavours. It lent another layer to the air of ostentation and doing something for its own sake that the actions of the people told us about the city of Camorr. It was a nice little detail.
Or you could always use your food as a weapon, as in the case of Kataria with the roasted bug leg in Sam Sykes’ Black Halo. That had to be as humiliating for poor Asper as it was amusing for us to read.
So, how can food be used as a plot device? To answer this, we need to look at the way food affects people, and how that can be used in fantasy.
We need food to survive; this is a fairly basic notion that everyone is familiar with. So what happens when that food is taken away? Starvation can do funny things to a person, making them hallucinate, rendering them too weak to complete vital tasks, and turning them on their friends and companions, desperate and willing to do anything just to find something to eat. Tension can be ramped up very easily this way; the dread that the character may not make it, the fear of what they might do, what they might become, the anxiety that the group may be divided and the mission compromised.
Food as a torture device is also a possibility; Joe Abercrombie makes good of this in his First Law Trilogy: every meal Inquisitor Glokta eats reminds him of his time in the Gurkhul jails, where they removed his teeth alternatively, and left him to survive on soups and porridges. Not a happy existence for anyone.
As stated above, it can also be used to explain or contrast cultures in your fantasy world; characters from one nation may be confused or disgusted by the eating habits of another, whilst the other may be morally or religiously offended by the menu in the first. Again, it’s a small way of adding detail, but sometimes it’s the small details that make the world of the story seem that little bit more real.
But back to the gruel problem; when did we run out of sources telling us what was available in that particular setting? Of course, there are certain foods that fit certain situations; characters couldn’t be expected to have a full twelve course banquet whilst travelling hundreds of miles across the continent, so travel rations would be expected, but they don’t have to be so dull. Yes, stew is a good idea because salted meats and vegetables will last a while between stops, but wouldn’t rice or pasta do the same thing? They’re dried to preserve them, so wouldn’t they make good rations?
And what of the meals in town? I have a personal mantra when it comes to cooking; if I can imagine it, it’s possible. Not necessarily edible, but I could make it. Surely, in a world of fantasy where we are gods and can create whatever we can imagine, we could throw in a hamburger or two?
Again, none of what I’m saying here will be new to anyone, but I do feel it’s worth a little consideration. Of course, some people don’t hold with the whole world-building thing, and some people revel in it, so levels of detail of a world over character will vary from author to author, but since it is something that characters are dependent on to survive, food should at least be thought of in the planning stages. Then again, if your character is a new breed of magical being who survives on fresh air and the first morning call of the birds, none of what I have said will be relevant. And that’s just fine as well.
