Honey Threads That Call Guests
Karem examined the ingredients and thought it over carefully.
At first, cotton candy came to mind.
But he quickly dismissed the idea himself.
Even if the only ingredient was sugar, where exactly was he supposed to pull it into threads? There was no cotton candy machine. He had seen people make it with a whisk in some national-era drama from across the sea, but he decided to try that later.
Cotton candy originated in fourteenth-century Italy, and while it would have been hand-pulled back then, Karem of course had no idea how.
So cotton candy was struck from the list.
He reviewed the mental list again, weighing his own tastes and peculiarities, until one dessert rose to the surface.
Pişmaniye. Dragon’s beard candy.
But to Karem it was familiar as honey threads.
No— the method might differ, yet the principle and technique were more or less the same.
With his ingredients gathered, Karem headed into the kitchen. Catherine and Mary followed him in.
Catherine eyed the items laid out on the table with open skepticism.
"Somehow there are fewer ingredients than I expected."
"Looking at the ingredients alone, it isn’t anything grand."
"Still, this is far too..."
Simple.
Honey, sugar, flour, and chopped walnuts and almonds. That was everything.
"But will it turn out the way I hope? Mary?"
"What is it?"
"I’ll handle the ratios, so would you grind the flour and sugar together for me?"
"Hmm?"
The honey threads Karem had occasionally seen in markets and busy streets usually used cornstarch and powdered sugar; that was all he knew.
Of course there would be no cornstarch here.
But Karem reasoned: cooking was all about improvisation anyway.
Cornstarch, stripped down, was just finely powdered grain carbohydrate. Couldn’t flour fill in? Powdered sugar itself was just sugar mixed with starch.
Naturally starch and flour were different things, and equating cornstarch with wheat flour under the banner of “carbohydrate” was like saying dogs and wolves were the same because both were canines—but what choice did he have?
There was no starch to begin with!
"How finely should I grind it...?"
"Until I say stop."
"Contractor. Is this correct?"
Mary could not make sense of it at all.
Grinding a mountain of sugar with only a little flour mixed in?
Why bother with something so pointless?
Catherine, of course, had only one thing to say.
"Mary."
"Yes?"
"Are you a better cook than the little one?"
"...I cannot deny it."
"Then do as you’re told."
Joyful, simple, repetitive labor.
An undeniable reality.
While Mary pounded the mortar with mixed feelings, Karem took the pot of honey and sugar bubbling into syrup off the heat.
Honey threads had their orthodox path and their heretical one. The orthodox method aged and fermented a base of natural honey mixed with maltose. The heretical path was simpler: as long as you could pull long threads, anything went. There were recipes that used corn syrup or oligosaccharides, or even inverted the whole thing with massive amounts of sugar and only a token of honey.
In that sense Karem felt no shame.
In a medieval fantasy, honey and sugar were both precious. Using this much natural material made orthodox and heretical irrelevant.
A certain famous not-quite-chef suddenly floated into his mind.
You have to put in a lot of sugar for it to taste good.
Anyway, as long as it tasted good.
Once the mixture had fully melted and changed color, Karem glanced toward Mary.
Every time the pestle slammed down with a heavy thud, a pale yellow cloud of sugar-flour rose in soft puffs.
He had ordered it, yet he never expected her to grind the brown sugar finer than flour itself.
Startled by the sheer monstrous strength, Karem shuddered.
"You can grind it this fine? Are you even human?"
"I am a Brownie."
"That’s not what I—never mind. This is enough."
"Cough. It seems I’ll have to clean especially thoroughly."
Karem piled the powdered sugar from the mortar into a mountain on a wide tray.
Honey and sugar were free-spirited materials that changed color and form at will.
He poured the hot-but-not-scorching dough onto the improvised powdered sugar.
"Whew. Now I have to knead this."
"Hmm. Fine. A little service."
"Lady Atanitas?"
Catherine flicked her fingers without a word. Soft light briefly cloaked Karem’s hands before vanishing.
"A basic protection spell."
"Ohhh. Ohhhh. This is convenient."
The heat he had felt moments earlier vanished completely.
Karem experimentally touched the hot syrup.
When neither heat nor pain registered, he immediately dusted his hands thoroughly in the powdered sugar and began working the dough.
"What a strange sensation. Hard to use often, though."
"Hm? Any particular reason?"
"I can’t feel the temperature, so it’s useless for heat control."
Without a proper thermometer or timer, relying solely on experience and feel made the spell overkill.
Still—blocking heat this thoroughly?
Karem was certain that if tools like Catherine’s protection magic existed in the modern world, they would explode in popularity among cooks.
A sly hope stirring, he asked,
"Is there a glove that still lets me feel temperature to some degree even with the protection magic?"
"How thin are we talking?"
"Well, cooking depends on the sense in your fingertips, so the thinner the better, I think."
He spoke with a “nice if it works, fine if it doesn’t” attitude, but when Catherine crossed her arms, closed her eyes, and began seriously considering it, expectation swelled against his will.
Then she opened her eyes.
"It’s not as if I can’t make one."
"Wait, seriously?"
"Yes. Just be prepared for a considerable price."
"Hss. Well, that can’t be helped."
He had long since learned how expensive magic tools were.
For now Karem focused on the task in front of him.
He could not feel the dough’s heat, yet the texture under his fingers was shouting that he could not afford to delay any longer.
He punched a hole in the heavily powdered dough, spun it, and pulled, repeating the motion until the ring stretched to the width of his chest.
"Surely that stretched ring isn’t the end of it?"
"Come on, would I stop there? This is just the beginning."
"Tch. Looks like it’s going to snap."
"Don’t worry. It won’t break."
Catherine tilted her head as if to say “prove it,” but soon her eyes lit up at the sight of Karem’s fingers.
He folded the single ring over itself and pulled, making two strands. Two became four, four became eight, eight became sixteen. Working alone like a cat’s cradle, Karem crossed the strands in his hands, pulled, layered, and dredged them again and again in the powdered sugar.
"This is rather entertaining to watch."
"How curious."
"Heeh—how fascinating."
Even modern people stopped to watch honey threads being made on the street; of course Catherine and Mary found it wondrous.
Inside, though, Karem was sweating coldly.
Outwardly the threads multiplied carefully with every movement of his hands.
But the sensation in his fingertips was inversely proportional to the growing number of strands.
Snap. Snap-snap. Snap.
The threads were breaking, little by little.
Wrong sugar-to-honey ratio? Or because he had substituted flour for starch?
Either was possible.
But this had been inevitable. After all, Karem had never once made honey threads himself in his previous life.
Curiosity had driven him to look up videos; that was the extent of it.
If anything, he felt proud of having come this far on knowledge alone.
Still, that was that and this was this.
Should he have just patiently extracted some kind of starch no matter how long it took?
Or simply made something easier like crepes or shaved ice?
Karem silently cursed his short-sighted urge to create something impressive and self-destruct.
Anyway, a little more stretching and it would really snap.
He hastily set the threads down before more of them broke.
He had doubled them twelve times—roughly four thousand strands.
Not even a quarter of the target.
But Karem decided to be content with this.
He cut the threads into manageable lengths, filled them with the chopped nuts, and rolled them up.
"Hah. So there was a reason you were so confident, little one."
"Kitty! Kitty! May I try some?"
"Princess Alicia. The little one is still prepari—"
Wait. What did I just hear?
Catherine mid-admiration, Mary mid-curiosity, and Karem mid-handling of the honey threads all turned as one toward the place the voice that should never have been heard had come from.
At one end of the kitchen table where the group stood—
A plump, extremely appetizing pair of cheeks and a golden head of hair popped up with a boing!
Dazed, Karem spoke without thinking.
"Princess Alicia?"
"Ehehe. That’s right. It’s Alicia."
"Good heavens."
Catherine reflexively clapped a hand to her forehead.
The punishment given to Alicia after the previous incident had been as follows:
No going outside for one week.
No snacks during the outdoor ban.
After the ban ended, she must always be accompanied by attendants and maids.
A light sentence for the rudeness she had committed.
Yet for a child with inexhaustible stamina and the freest spirit in Winterhome, it was worse than a thrashing.
But blessings come to those who endure.
Time passed, and Winter-Ascend drew near.
Alicia did not miss her chance.
While the castle was in a frenzy of preparation for Winter-Ascend and the attendants and maids briefly looked away, Alicia successfully reclaimed her freedom!
She announced it with pride.
Catherine’s response was simple.
"Mary. Tell the attendants and maids that the princess—"
"Ah, aaaah! Kitty! Just once! Forgive me just once! Look, see? This time I didn’t even eat Kitty’s snack without permission! Just oooonce!"
Hmm. Come to think of it.
Karem regarded her with fresh eyes.
Alfred was clearly a thoroughly fair man.
A child spoiled rotten and never properly punished usually grew up spoiled.
If that child was a highborn daughter, it went without saying.
The antics of wayward chaebol third-generations were infamous, after all.
In that sense Alicia seemed to be growing up remarkably well. Her speech and shameless attitude were a bit annoying, but still within the range of endearing.
What they called “irritatingly cute.”
Most of all, Alicia no longer ate other people’s snacks without permission the way she used to.
(Setting aside the fact that Karem had been the one who handed her those snacks.)
When Karem looked at Catherine with a silent “Lady Atanitas? What should we do?”, she heaved a deep sigh and waved her hand. The meaning was obvious.
"Princess Alicia?"
"Hm? What is it?"
"I’ll portion some out for you, so please eat carefully—watch the powder."
"Oh! Ohhhhh!!!"
A mysterious snack far too precious to devour in one bite.
Unlike the way she had once gorged on pudding, Alicia carefully nibbled at the honey threads.
"Hmph! Crispy and sweet enough to make the teeth ache, yet it vanishes without a trace, and the almonds and walnuts that appear pair wonderfully with it!"
"Mm. Little one. What is the name of this thing?"
"Uh, for now I’m calling it honey threads."
At that moment Karem flinched.
Because Catherine, Mary, and Alicia, who had been savoring the honey threads, all scowled at once.
Alicia shouted,
"What kind of name is that?!"
The child whose pure heart had been shattered slammed the table in fury.
Catherine and Mary nodded in agreement.
Karem felt wronged.
No, that really was the original name.
Should he have just called it dragon’s beard candy?
Of course, then Catherine would have beaten him with the fact that dragons do not grow beards.
And here stood one old dwarf whose steadfast heart was beginning to waver.
"Lady Alicia. Why...!"
Jigmeser.
The dwarf who had shaved off his hair and beard for the sake of cooking—an unprecedented figure in dwarf history.
Head chef of the Felwinter family and Winterhome.
The man who doted on Alicia like his own granddaughter was now burning with rage at the scoundrel who had stolen her away.