When the emperor sits down at his table, surrounded by the assembled kings, nobles and merchant princes of his domain, his servants do not serve dishes assembled for their succulence, but rather for their expense. In the world of emperors and kings, one entertains to show his guests just where they stand in relation to the throne – i.e. beneath it. Of course, the table setting is part of the overall effect – plates and utensils of porcelain, silver and gold – but the dishes, composed of rare and wondrous ingredients is just as important if not more so. Thus – the patented Nodian Random Haute Cuisine Generator. With a mere handful of dice, you can cover the tables of nobles, kings and emperor’s alike with meals fit for a gourmet (or gourmand).

The true origin of these tables was in a document I use while stocking my random hex crawls. I call it “The Thesaurus”, and it began as just that – a thesaurus of color words so I didn’t have describe everything red as “red”. It soon expanded to land forms, people and then food and clothing. There are just too many excellent words out there not to attempt to use them all, you know. Having this little storehouse of knowledge, I came up with this as a way to present at least the edible part of it. You can use these tables to concoct strange fantasy recipes (either to serve players as guests, or to send players after on kingly quests) or just use them when trying to stock your own world’s and dungeons.

The process is simple. First, choose a style of dish or roll it randomly on that first table. The style of dish show you how many rolls you must make on the different ingredient tables to discover just what is needed to bring the inventive gourmand’s imagined recipe to fruition.

Once you have determined the style of dish and the ingredients, it is up to you, as Referee, to describe the dish. A few samples are included at the bottom of the page. So grab some dice and get cooking!

Oh – and before I forget, two websites were invaluable in teaching me a bit about medieval cooking: Medieval Cookery and Gode Cookery.

* Indicates that cheese is called for in the recipe, rather than milk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sample Dishes

The Emperor Norton is hosting a garden party for the luminaries of Brobdinag and Laputa, and his cook has worked up the following dishes to show off. The first is a thick soup of cuttlefish, komatsuna and horse gram spiced with long peppers. This will be preceded by an aspic made with duck eggs with pyrolisk and ackee suspended in it and a chickpea frytour made with cottonseed oil and spiced with Szechuan peppers. Yummy!