The Empire's First Cooking Master (1)
There is a wine called hippocras.
The name alone summons up some white-bearded grandfather of a physician, and in fact it was a medieval spiced wine descended from the prescriptions of Hippocrates himself. He often had his patients drink wine mixed with herbs and medicinal stuffs, and little by little that remedy grew into spiced wine. It was also the ancestor of vin chaud, the warm wine cafés and bars sell through the winter, so one could guess its aroma and flavor had been singular indeed. Otherwise it could never have survived into a modern age already drowning in things to eat.
And why, of all things, had this occurred to me now?
Right about now he ought to be tasting the terrine and catching the scent of the wine.
Ground meat is inevitably full of moisture, and moisture in meat is what breeds gaminess and off-flavors. I had used wild venison besides, and no half-hearted spice would be enough to pin that smell down. I had World Tree sap and leaves, true, but even those greens could not counterfeit the refined character that belongs to liquor alone. The original recipe called for brandy, wine that had been distilled, and I had substituted hippocras.
Brandy, my ass. I'd had a hard enough time finding wine that was even drinkable.
Fantasy world or not, it was still the Middle Ages. Tracking down a distilled spirit was difficult enough, and finding one that wasn't poison was rarer still. Distillation, done wrong, yields methanol, a lethal toxin. Back home, generations of other people's trial and error had more or less retired that particular accident. Here it was a cheerful little medieval theme park. You could take a happy sip and be done with your life.
So I had made the hippocras myself, blending cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, honey, and the rest, and aged the terrine's forcemeat in that wine. The refined sweetness and body of red wine, together with the character of the spices, ought to have lifted the terrine another notch. For all I knew, he was in there letting out something on the order of Oh—ooh?!
"Pfft."
"What are you laughing at all of a sudden?"
"Ah, nothing. A stray thought."
I couldn't help it, picturing that solemn old lion of crimson hair startled into something so undignified. I gathered myself again and set about the next course, French onion soup.
"Ho—hooooh?!"
Crunch—
Leonik had shoveled a mouthful of the venison gibier terrine into his mouth, and his eyes flew wide. The layers, stacked in an order that honored rank, mingled and fused between his molars.
Campagne: the rough country bread commoners baked in the village's communal oven. A dull earthen brown, dry-looking at a glance, and yet an element this appetizer could not do without. From the very bottom it bore up the terrine and the beet pickle, and with the steadiness of grain it held the center of the flavor.
To reign is to stand at the summit of all people. The word looks absolute, all-powerful, and yet the act exists only because all people exist. In this dish, the campagne was that element.
Delightful. Truly delightful!
Then the venison gibier terrine itself. Alongside the deer it held pork and beef, drawing out the savor of many fats, while the foie gras smoothly bridged a texture that might otherwise have gone dry. Each time he bit into a pistachio, a fresh fragrance filled his mouth.
And one thing more. A sweetness at once deeply complex and sharply individual clung to Leonik's retronasal passage in the form of aroma.
The retronasal passage is the soft palate, where the mouth gives way to the nasal cavity—the olfactory organ seated there that perceives aromatic scent. Drink a supreme wine, and do you not, without thinking, draw the air back over it, hmm, hmm? That is the place that takes the lead in letting one feel the aroma, and Leonik felt it fiercely stimulated by this terrine.
This is... wine. Spiced wine, at that.
To make a terrine is, inevitably, to wage war on off-flavors. Many cooks, hoping to win that battle, dump spices in by the handful or work an infusion into the forcemeat, and neither approach makes for desirable cooking. Too much moisture dilutes the terrine's flavor and collapses its shape. The crux is to use as little water as possible, and yet, with that small amount, still tenderize the meat and drive the smell clean off.
Kang Jinwoo had solved it with spiced wine.
A faint, honeyed sweetness of red grape, a tannin of exquisite delicacy, had seeped into the meat and erased the gaminess. Into the space the gaminess left behind, the scents of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg shoved their hips in and sat down, seizing tight the slackened discipline of the terrine. It was like lords pressing their subjects from every side so they would not grow idle. Or like the bureaucrats of the Empire.
At this passage, Leonik was deeply moved.
In all the long history of the Aethernia Empire, had anyone ever rendered the shape of society so clearly, and so joyfully? Stuffy scholars could not. Mages lost in mystery could not. Knights who were muscle all the way up to the brain could not. Food is what every sort of person consumes as an equal—the cook handles every dish, from the lowest commoner to the emperor. And among cooks, only an eccentric like Kang Jinwoo could manage a stroke this inspired.
So he was expectant. Here, then—what role did this blood-red beet pickle, the thing that signified himself, mean to play?
Crunch, crunch—
His canines pierced the blood-red beet pickle, and at once a gentle sweetness and a tart acidity spread through his mouth. The terrine's richness and the campagne's dryness vanished like snow in the sun, and his tongue was washed so clean he could have taken the next bite that very moment.
What is it? The beet pickle Kang Jinwoo used as a figure for Us. What is its intent?
Leonik poured every nerve into his taste buds, reaching for the answer. What he tasted in the beet pickle was a gentle sweetness and an acidity unmatched anywhere else in the appetizer, and the result those flavors summoned was a sharp, stinging clarity. This sensation of freshening a tongue gone dull with grain and fat...
Thud—!
Understanding struck at last. His palm cracked down hard on the table as he cried out in wonder.
The common folk are diligent and sincere, but they have not learned much. Officials and nobles have learned a great deal, and they are cunning and greedy in equal measure. When the flaws of both stand out, the nation sinks into stagnation. Kang Jinwoo was speaking of that season. Like the beet pickle gazing down upon campagne and terrine from the highest place—the insight to watch over all people, and then to cut a stagnant road open. A sovereign, he was saying, must possess precisely that.
Munch, munch—
Unable to restrain himself, Leonik devoured the rest of the venison gibier terrine in a flash.
He was delighted. In nearly thirty years of life, had there ever been a moment this delightful? When his gallant princes and his lovely princess were born, that had been joy. When his beloved empress, her strength spent in childbirth, went to the Goddess Maria's side, that had been sorrow. When he gained the diplomatic upper hand over neighboring states; when he executed the wicked noble who had levied taxes with such malice; when he drank alone, looking out over the night of Belegrad...
In none of those moments had there been delight.
And yet now Kang Jinwoo's food was quickening a delight in Leonik that dust had piled upon until it hardened.
"Chamberlain! Serve the next course—quickly!!"
"Y-yes! At once!"
In that instant, fire dropped without warning onto the feet of a chamberlain who had let his guard down.
Around the time I finished melting the cheese that crowned the next course, the French onion soup, the chamberlain came rushing in. His Imperial Majesty Leonik was muttering to himself, he said. Firing off idiot exclamations along the lines of Ho—hooooh?!, he said.
I had been looking forward to the reaction, but I hadn't expected it to go that far. And Leonik, for all his streak of lovable foolishness, was fundamentally an emperor. Fierce crimson hair, black eyes that seemed to see through to the soul, an aura like a lion's—one could not dare think him ridiculous. So I let the chamberlain's report in one ear and out the other.
Then he came back again, and this time he reported Leonik's verdict on the French onion soup: a flavor that lifts the common folk's joys and sorrows to their limit and submits a petition to the very top of the Empire.
Hearing that, I understood the emperor meant it.
What? What even is that. That's terrifying...
The venison gibier terrine was the most perfect summary of the Aethernia Empire? He had tasted the common folk's joys and sorrows, and a petition to the throne, in French onion soup? I wanted a bite of whatever flavor that was myself. At this rate I half-suspected the chamberlain of secretly dosing the dishes with some kind of drug on the way. Of course he wasn't.
Well... he was enjoying it, so fine.
Leonik was demolishing the food like a man possessed, and I hurried the courses along with him. Even now I had been using a fire spirit to crisp only the skin of the duck-leg confit when the chamberlain burst in. Break that rhythm, and no matter how much pleasure I had served so far, all I would earn was the opposite—his temper. It was the gravest of grave crimes, the sort that might even draw a death threat, so I finished the main at once: duck-leg confit with pomegranate sauce, and fried potatoes.
I truly hadn't put any such intent into the first two courses. I had simply taken the classics of French cooking, a representative appetizer and a representative soup, and adapted them to the concept of the menu.
But the duck-leg confit... that one, I definitely loaded with intent.
Leonik, who had flipped his sensitivity to two hundred percent and felt intentions I had never even put in. If a man like that tasted my main, the dish packed full of intent... what kind of reaction would he show?
"Lord Chamberlain, do you happen to have a camera?"
"Pardon? A chimera, you mean? We have no such monster..."
"Ah, nonsense. My apologies."
I want this on tape.
From the first bite until he set down his fork and knife, the urge surged up in me to watch the uncut, unedited full version.