Misunderstanding (2)
“That knight named Beriang must have been quite the figure.”
“Yes. In a few years, his name will likely echo across the entire continent.”
We passed the time chatting about Chico and his mercenary group, and before we knew it the sky had begun to brighten. As I wondered what to make for breakfast, Joy—who had risen early—pulled something from his pack. It resembled a khaki water skin, but its color made it look uncomfortably like a plastic bag filled with cow dung.
When I showed interest, Joy’s face lit up and he launched into an eager explanation.
“In my hometown we call this haggis. It’s only been a couple of days since I made it, so the appearance isn’t great, but once it ages properly it’s actually quite tasty.”
At Joy’s prompting I studied the dish on the table more closely. Its exterior was genuinely bizarre—like a collection of things a cow had chewed and spat out.
“You finely chop up the intestines of a cow or sheep, then mix in oats, onions, carrots, and radish.”
From his description, haggis seemed to be a cousin of black pudding—or sundae—but prepared in an entirely different way. Normal black pudding used long casings from the small or large intestines. In modern times people often substituted edible plastic casings for mass production. But the haggis Joy had brought used a stomach as its casing instead. That was why, despite being in the black-pudding family, it looked less like a familiar sausage and more like food waste sealed in a wide, flat pouch.
The taste would probably be similar, but because a stomach was far more elastic than intestines, the contents shifted and moved in ways that made it look nothing like conventional sausage. Its unappetizing appearance made it hard to even consider eating.
“Mind if I take a look inside?”
“Of course, go ahead.”
Joy sliced open the top with his dagger. The contents that spilled into view wobbled like goblin stew.
“Do you just scoop this out and eat it?”
“That’s right. When it’s fresh you spread it on bread like a sauce. After a month it firms up like regular black pudding and you can eat it that way.”
Joy demonstrated by spreading some on a piece of hard bread. The sight of khaki mush smeared across stale bread was enough to kill anyone’s appetite. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way; none of the others looked eager to try it either.
“Joy’s from the northwestern grasslands, I hear. Explains why he eats weird stuff.”
“Yeah. He says it’s like black pudding, but it’s nothing like it.”
“Looks like something someone puked up after a night of heavy drinking. Who the hell would eat that?”
The barrage of harsh criticism turned Joy’s face beet red. He had only wanted to save money and share a taste of home, yet everyone’s disgusted reactions left him deflated. Damn it. This is how we eat it back home. Though anger simmered inside him, the constant negativity made him decide he would never make haggis again.
Jinwoo watched Joy’s expression and the unfortunate dish with a pang of sympathy. When outsiders rejected something as unpleasant, rare regional foods that had survived for generations could vanish forever. In Korea, jar salt had nearly disappeared because of refined sea salt, and the original recipe for Jinju naengmyeon had been lost. Only frantic efforts to restore the old methods and local government protection had kept jar salt alive as a cultural heritage. Jinju naengmyeon, however, had been overtaken by Pyongyang and Busan styles; its true recipe was gone, and later revival attempts could never be certain they matched the original flavor.
This haggis would likely suffer the same fate. If people refused to make it because it looked bad, the recipe would be forgotten and the dish itself erased from memory. Even if someone later found a record of its existence, without anyone who knew how to prepare it, the knowledge would die.
No one could say how many native dishes had already disappeared that way.
Preserve the Endangered Traditional Dish!
📍 Type: Hidden / Subclass
🎁 Reward: Unknown
Wait… is this actually a quest? It carried the exact flavor of those cliché missions given to characters who took Cooking as a secondary class.
Even though this wasn’t a game that displayed quest windows, the situation felt classic enough. Jinwoo racked his brain for a way to salvage the haggis. Once he had a rough idea, he pulled out the largest pot they had.
“Scoop all the filling out and put it in this pot.”
“Huh? Mage, sir, are you actually going to eat it?”
“That’s right. I’m going to make it taste better, so hurry up and empty the filling.”
At the promise of an improved version, Joy’s mood brightened instantly and he began scooping with enthusiasm. Since it had only been three days, the oats, onions, carrots, and radish had aged nicely and melded together. Jinwoo added flour, eggs, salt, and pepper, then kneaded the mixture into a firm dough.
Joy and the other mercenaries watched the stiff kneading but didn’t seem impressed. “The color’s a bit lighter now. Are we supposed to eat it like this?”
“No. I’m going to fry it.”
Jinwoo decided to turn the haggis filling into something like a Korean savory pancake—something these Westerners had never encountered. It would’ve been better with garlic chives or kimchi, though. Too bad.
He set the kneaded dough aside and rendered pork fat in a frying pan to create cooking oil. Once the pan was well-greased, he dropped rounded portions of the haggis batter into it, shaping them like small pancakes.
The sharp sizzling sound of batter hitting hot oil spread through the camp. Even the heavy sleepers who had been slow to wake up came wandering over at the noise.
“Chico, if we cook breakfast it’ll take time. Is that all right?”
“It’s fine. We don’t have any urgent schedule today. Taking time for a proper breakfast isn’t a bad idea.”
“Then bring out the plates.”
The once-khaki batter began to develop a beautiful Maillard reaction as it fried, turning into an appetizing golden-brown. The color that had looked so unappealing transformed into something mouth-watering. Jinwoo tore off a piece while it was still hot, blew on it, and took a bite. It wasn’t bad at all.
The meaty texture is there, and the vegetables—onion and carrot aged for three days—have become pleasantly soft. The oats gave it a faint, savory crunch reminiscent of scorched rice. It’s closer to Korean mung-bean pancakes than regular jeon.
As he chewed, a familiar taste emerged—something he had experienced in dishes other than black pudding or blood sausage. I’ve definitely eaten this flavor before. Where was it…?
While flipping another pancake, the memory finally surfaced. It’s dumpling filling.
The fried haggis tasted exactly like dumpling filling that had been pan-fried after being removed from its wrapper. If you took the chives-and-pork mixture from dumplings, added flour and egg, and fried it, this was precisely the result. The khaki color was also similar to the filling of chive dumplings, which made the resemblance even stronger.
Come to think of it, the last time I pan-fried dumpling filling like this was also outdoors. During a university club membership training trip, they had tried making unusual snacks and ended up frying leftover dumpling filling. The next day they had used the rest to make rice burgers—pressing microwaved instant rice into “rice bread” and using the fried filling as a patty. Of course, the ketchup on the patty had carried most of the flavor, but the group had still given it decent reviews.
Since they had no instant rice here, Jinwoo lightly toasted the mercenaries’ hard bread in the pan to soften it. He then assembled the haggis pancakes between slices of bread. The result looked surprisingly like hamburgers. It would have been better with lettuce, tomato, ketchup, or mayonnaise, but they had to make do.
He handed the finished patties to Yanne and Chico and urged them to try it. Both stared at the unfamiliar shape on their plates with serious expressions, turning the food this way and that. Jinwoo almost laughed when he realized the problem. They had never seen a hamburger before and had no idea how to eat it. The thought that people must have reacted the same way when hamburgers first appeared made him chuckle.
He picked up his own burger with both hands and took a demonstrative bite.
“Hold it firmly so the filling doesn’t fall out.”
Now that she understood, Yanne grasped hers with both hands and bit in.
“Oh! Master! This is a flavor I’ve never tasted before! And it’s really good!”
With her mouth full of oil-crisped bread and savory pancake, there was no way it could taste bad. The amino acids produced by the Maillard reaction were the pinnacle of flavor in any era.
Chico took one bite, then immediately passed his burger to Joy, who had been hovering nearby and drooling. Joy, lured by the delicious smell, took a huge bite and passed it on. His eyes widened.
“M-Mage, sir. Did you really make this from my haggis?”
“You watched me do it, didn’t you?”
Even the same blood sausage or haggis could taste completely different once fried in oil and transformed by the Maillard effect. Jinwoo ended up making around thirty haggis-patty burgers so everyone could have some. The mercenaries, declaring it the first time they had ever tasted anything like it, each received three and looked ready to devour them all for breakfast.
“Three each still leaves extras. We’ll be eating them until dinner.”
He could have used the same filling to make actual dumplings, but without a proper kitchen he settled for the pancakes. No matter how much he enjoyed cooking, preparing enough for nine people was real labor—especially without proper tools. One proper meal a day was plenty.
“By the way, Mage, sir,” Joy asked, “why does Yanne never cook? You always do it yourself.”
Usually when a high-status man took in a young girl, it was so she could handle cooking and miscellaneous chores. Jinwoo never asked Yanne to do any of that, so Joy was curious.
“I spent nine years living alone. Cooking became a hobby.”
“Ah… I see…”
“Nine years…”
The mercenaries’ faces turned solemn in an instant.
Huh? Is living alone for nine years really that sad? Their sudden change in attitude was strange, but Jinwoo figured they simply found it pitiful that a man’s hobby was cooking and let the matter drop.
“We thought the mage was just some young noble or high aristocrat’s relative. But if he spent nine years alone training magic, that’s seriously impressive.”
“Right? That kind of training is probably why people treat him like a noble even though he’s a mage. Would you be able to train by yourself for nine years?”
“No way. So that’s why mages have such eccentric personalities. Nine years alone… that’s hardcore.”
“Exactly. Asking someone to live nine years without smelling a woman is basically telling them to die.”
The mercenaries could only look at Jinwoo with a mixture of respect and pity. From then on, the deference they showed him grew noticeably deeper.