The Dessert for the Belated Farewell Party
The house Hammerson had pressed on them to stay in was so clean and luxurious that Karem—who had only ever lived in places that might as well have been pigsties—stood with his mouth hanging open in pure astonishment.
"What on earth is this sheet made of?"
The bed Karem claimed for himself was large and wide enough for a full-grown adult to sprawl across alone, never mind a young boy. The mattress was soft and springy; though it was plain and unadorned, it was solid enough that even bouncing on it produced not a single creak. Goose down, maybe? Comparing it to the half-rotted wooden planks or the piles of straw he had once called a bed back in the village felt almost disrespectful.
Everything else in the room—the table and chairs, the cupboard for water and supplies, the wardrobe—had clearly been crafted from fine timber. Karem clicked his tongue. No matter how hard he ran the numbers, there was simply no way he could afford to lodge in a place like this on his own coin. Even if he scraped together every last copper he owned, getting into the inner city at all would be hard enough for an orphan like him, let alone renting a house. He could, in theory, empty his purse and make something work—but this money was precious settlement capital. He couldn't waste a single copper of it.
The fleeting thought of asking Catherine and Gordon for a few gold coins mid-journey only made him grimace. A little orphan with gold coins? Rumors would fly before the sun set.
"Ah, forget it. Thinking about it only makes my head hurt."
Brooding over money and an uncertain future had left him feeling gloomy, so Karem hopped down from the bed. He headed downstairs to the kitchen, hoping a change of scenery would lift his mood. When your thoughts got too tangled, the best cure was to keep your hands moving so hard that nothing else could crowd into your head.
Besides, he had already promised dessert. Since things had turned out this way, he might as well make one.
When Karem reached the first floor, Catherine was seated on the living-room sofa before a crackling fireplace, reading a parchment scroll with a serious expression. Careful not to disturb her, he slipped past and stepped into the kitchen—then stopped short in admiration.
The kitchen had clearly been well maintained; its condition was excellent. Aside from a few details, he could almost have mistaken it for a modern standing kitchen done up in medieval style. The walls and counters were paneled in handsome wood, the pots, pans, and utensils were unmistakably copper, and the dishes felt expensive the moment he touched them. In one corner stood a full-sized oven complete with its own woodpile; the exterior had been finished so carefully that running a hand from top to bottom met not a single rough patch. The cupboards and storage bins were stocked with hams, sausages, seasonings, dried fruits, and containers of rock-hard bread. There was a large jar of honey and a box stacked with butter as well.
Yet what truly caught his eye—more even than the cluster of honey jars filling one corner of the U-shaped shelves—was something else entirely.
"So… what kind of egg is this?"
An egg. While rummaging for anything useful, Karem had found several of them tucked into one side of a cabinet. He set one in a wide bowl on the table. Aside from being pure white, it looked almost exactly like a chicken egg—until you noticed it was the size of an adult human head.
"Ostrich? I don't know if they even have ostriches here."
That explained the hammer among the cooking tools that looked like a miniature war hammer. If this thing really was as tough as an ostrich egg, you would definitely need a pointed hammer to crack it. Karem gripped the hammer with both hands and, after a great deal of effort, finally managed to break the shell. As the egg jostled from the impact, he quickly tipped the entire contents into a large copper bowl.
Glug, glug!
True to its ostrich-like proportions, thick egg white poured out through the small hole. Just as the whites began to fill the bowl, there came a soft pop—like a wine cork—and a massive yolk tumbled free.
"Whoa. A few of these and you could throw a feast for the whole village."
He had heard that one ostrich egg equaled about a dozen chicken eggs. Looking at the overwhelming volume of white and yolk now filling the pot, he could believe it. The ratio looked roughly six-to-four whites to yolk.
Now what to make? Watching the mixture ripple gently in the bowl, Karem ran through recipes in his mind. The staples of any dessert were flour, butter, milk, and sugar—sugar and milk especially if you wanted something sweet and soft. But sugar was a costly luxury, and there was no milk in the kitchen. He could go out and buy some… He immediately shook his head. In a medieval world without modern refrigeration, anything but morning-fresh milk was a fast track to food poisoning. Even in the modern world, dairy-related poisonings were common. The weather might be cooling, but he still couldn't bring himself to trust the local milk.
Then inspiration struck.
"Ah—castella."
A sponge cake that needed only eggs, flour, sugar, and butter—relatively simple ingredients. Sugar could be swapped for honey, and that was that. Preparing everything still took serious labor, but it was already late. The moment the image of a fluffy castella rose in his mind, Karem's body moved on its own.
While the oven heated, he pulled out another copper bowl and opened a lower cabinet to check the sacks of flour. As long as it was fine and free of grit, the type didn't matter. The eggs were the real star. Still, good flour never hurt, and luckily the flour here was excellent. He took down a jar of honey and the butter box, then set out a scale and bowls and began carefully separating the whites from the yolks.
The soul of castella was the meringue. Its softness came from a completely different foundation than ordinary cake. Where a regular cake relied on yeast fermentation and countless tiny egg bubbles, castella rose because the meringue itself expanded under heat.
"The problem is the whisk…"
Nothing to be done about it. If you didn't have the proper tool, you improvised—with cooking and equipment alike. Karem picked up a bundle of thin twigs. Unbeknownst to him, the bundle was meant for sifting and blending dry powders, but it would have to serve.
Whip-whip-whip-whip!
Every time the slender twigs beat vigorously through the whites, foam began to rise. By the time Karem felt a cramp starting in his forearm, the bowl that had held liquid egg white was filling with soft, cloud-like meringue. He switched arms and kept whipping until that arm, too, went numb. The transparent froth had become a pure white cloud.
Perfect meringue never fell from an inverted bowl. He gave the bowl a cautious flip, confirmed the peaks held, and set a portion of meringue aside. Into the rest he folded melted butter and honey, then added only the yolks once the mixture had taken on a pale yellow tint. By the time the meringue had turned a light orange, every muscle in his body was tingling. Kitchen work was hard labor by nature; exhaustion was inevitable.
"But dessert is always worth it…!"
Without pausing to rest, he sifted in flour a little at a time, folding carefully with a spatula so everything combined evenly. Once the batter was ready, he greased a deep rectangular pan with butter and dusted it lightly with flour—insurance against the cake sticking and forcing him to dig it out with a spoon. The oven was perfectly hot. He poured the batter in, leaving a little headspace for rising, and slid the pan straight in.
"Hmm. I should stop reading here for now."
A dull ache had settled into her neck and shoulders. Catherine rolled up the scroll and, without meaning to, spoke her thoughts aloud. Outside the window the sky remained the same dull gray, but judging by the fireplace logs she guessed an hour or two had passed. She had spent centuries reading enough books to fill a small castle, yet she had never managed to sit still for long stretches the way other scholars or mages could.
It wasn't that she disliked reading—far from it. She enjoyed it more than most clerks. Curling up like a caterpillar in a blanket before the fire with an ancient tome whose edges were ready to crumble was pure bliss. Her mind loved it; her body simply refused to cooperate. Perhaps it was constitution, or perhaps reaching the realm of agelessness while still so young left her with too much youthful vitality.
Catherine stretched on the sofa for a moment, gazing into the flames. There had been interruptions along the way, but the reduced party size had actually let them reach Borderster faster than planned. Only a single day of leeway—but that was enough for this unhurried rest. Under the original schedule she would have been riding hard for Iceland within two days of finishing the commission, not lounging in front of a fireplace.
"Mmm…? What's that?"
A sweet scent? All of a sudden?
Lost in thought, she noticed a thin current of air carrying a delicious sweetness past her nose. Right—the little tagalong from the journey had said he wanted to try making dessert. She had silently agreed when Gordon told him to give it a shot if he could. Of course she hadn't believed he actually could. Childish bravado, she had assumed. The meals he had cooked on the road had been tasty enough, but a proper meal and a proper dessert were worlds apart.
Yet both she and Gordon were about to be pleasantly betrayed. Nothing else could explain how the sweet aroma had completely conquered the living room, overpowering even the smell of burning wood as if that single earlier wisp had never existed.
"Just what is he making that smells like this—?"
Even if Hammerson lived well enough to keep a house in the inner city, he surely wasn't using sugar. The scent had to be honey; Catherine would stake her name on it. Surely the boy hadn't decided that "dessert" simply meant "something sweet" and dumped in honey by the ladleful? No—she was certain he wouldn't. The former serf child she had traveled with had his share of peculiarities: a mind far too mature for his years, and cooking skill that would hold its own in a noble kitchen if only he had the ingredients. Those were the most important things about him, really. But in all their time together he had never been the sort to play tricks with food.
Still, nothing in this world was absolute. Carrying a faint, half-formed unease, Catherine rose and headed for the kitchen.