Replicated food: "Mmm mmm", "bleh" or "yuck!"?

Well played sir...well played

 

This is how I would view it, there would be only a few recipes and options to choose from and dishes like soups, sauces, baking that rely on combinations would likely be harder to replicate. There is mention of this in DS9 where characters "program in" special recipes, which might involve some time and trial and error the way its presented. If they were real tomorrow, replicators would be convenient and great most likely and everyone would use them almost all the time. There would still be certain things that would escape the technology and certain people who would reject it outright, and I always thought TNG and DS9 did a good job of presenting this reality.

 

That's what I think too. I can go buy pizza from wherever but it's nothing like the recipe I got from my mum. We make sweet and sour pork and sometimes it's a bit too frizzled, sometimes it's too gooey but I like having that randomness.

 

If a Replicator could reproduce food at the QUANTUM level, would those potential minute discrepancies in taste go away? The consistency issue would remain...unless you have n-amount of recipes per dish.

(n being at least - say - one hundred variations on a theme.)

 

In my mind, replicated food is the 24th century equivalent of eating frozen microwavable meals. It's good enough for some people, but doesn't taste as good as freshly cooked food.

 

Any U.K. readers may understand if I say I imagine food from a replicator is akin to a product called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”.

Looks like butter, smells like butter, tastes… somewhat like real butter, but could never replace the real thing.

If I was onboard Voyager, my overriding reason for getting back home would be decent butter. 7 years of no butter… It scarcely bears thinking about.

 

The variable unpalatable nature of replicated food is directly proportional to how much the presence of real food would benefit a given episode's script. By the way, did Picard ever raise a stink about his replicator's Earl Grey?

 

Unless I have tried it myself, I can't say. But food for thought.

 

I'd vote that it is... Meh... Nothing trully inspiring, nor completely awful either

Cuisine is an art. Just as music or a speech can delight, bore or horrify the ear, & a painting or image can do so to the eye, or a fragrant perfume or flower bouquet can with the nose, so too can a culinary artist do it for the tongue, & with anything computer created, there's undoubtedly that expected lack of human character

Computer creating the constituent parts themselves, to craft a meal personally might prove more likeable, but even then, depending on how authentic their synthesis is, it could still come up short maybe

I do get the impression that their tech is good enough that they do manage to enjoy it mostly

 

easier to acquire base material, than

 

It's like someone took those few lines from that dinner scene in Alien and decided to swing for the fences with their own interpretation.

 

Honestly the frequent hatred the characters in TNG throw at replicated food is one of my least favourite aspects of TNG.

You have a freaking magic machine that churns out nutritiously enhanced ice cream sundaes whenever you tell it to. That sounds like paradise.
And honestly even the frequent idea that "every time you order a meal it will taste the exact same" aspect sounds freaking awesome to me.
They just sound spoiled to me, tbh.

 

Owonnn.

 

Yeah that was the episode when they claimed hand-scrambled eggs have more soul or something.
And then it was some alien eggs and nobody wanted to eat it. Hahaha

Also I never noticed, but...they just eat scrambled eggs without anything in it? No chives? No onion (spring or otherwise)? No olives? etc. That's gotta be bland.

 

Riker The Chef manages to coast by on charisma.

For starters, he's not making an omelet: those are clearly scrambled eggs.

Secondly, did he naturally assume his coworkers would devour "owon eggs" without complaint? Has he ever actually tried this variety of egg? Did he pick up a bad batch and never tested the waters (so to speak) with a single specimen?

Finally, as you say, he didn't add any sort of garnish, spice or complementary ingredients. Myself, I prefer a bit of black pepper.

P.S. Scrambled eggs go well with Mediterranean/Arabic green olives (preferably those that have been pickled in brine) and flatbread/pocket bread.

 

That's another thing, he didn't even serve any bread with the scrambled eggs! He just heaped a pile of pale-yellow scrambled Owon eggs onto everybody's plate and then had the brazenness to talk about the "flair" of home-cooking!

 

Home cooking, when done properly, can be a wonderful thing. But those TNG Era replicators would be a heaven send too. I would've loved to have one of those!

 

I only have pepper and a little salt in mine.

 

But I assume you don't serve it to your friends acting like you just created a five star gourmet meal?

 

You know... You get all the context you need right in the scene lol. Maybe Riker's dad never really had the stomach to point out to his son what an awful cook he was. I mean his mother is dead, & they can barely stand each other. Let the little trewp have a victory for god sake. Most of the world's cluelessly inept people got that way because no one raised them with enough constructive criticism.

You'd think if he was a legitimately great cook we'd have gotten more testimonials to that fact, like from his Imzadi, who he had to have done some cooking for over the years.. I think he's probably just deluding himself