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

You raise a fair point. That said, I have eaten "plain" scrambled eggs cooked by someone that knows what they're doing...those eggs were delightfully fluffy and oh-so-perfectly balanced in flavor, requiring nothing but a fork.

Anyone up for a healthy serving of Dunning-Kruger ?

 

Note who isn't present to eat some eggs. And who probably made up an emergency counselling session to escape it.

 

The fact that Worf chows down on his serving with gusto potentially says many things.

• Worf is weird...or perhaps simply used to human cooking (his parents must have served him Earth fare amidst his requests for Klingon food).
• Worf attempted to curry favor with a superior officer; he knows how to play the promotion game.
• Owon eggs are like catnip to Klingons.
• Riker inadvertently revolutionized Klingon cuisine: someone from their species/culture genuinely enjoyed organic matter that was cooked.

 

And programming in your own custom recipes doesn't always have good results. In VOY, it was a bit of a running joke with Janeway burning or liquefying replicated roasts. But she blamed the replicator and not her recipe.

Kor

 

Everybody else's reaction seems to suggest the eggs were very off tasting, & Klingons are known to prefer rather potent food, as per Kurn's claim that human food is almost always bland to them. I just took it as he accidentally made something particularly palatable to Worf

 

Makes me wonder what those Owons are. Theoretically they don't even have to be birds. What if they are some sort of reptile?

 

Or some kind of mammal similar to an echidna or a duck-billed platypus.
But in that case I think the eggs would have developing fetuses inside, instead of the gelatinous/runny stuff.

Kor

 

Owon eggs and prune juice...breakfast of champions right there.

How about a synapsid/proto-mammal?

 

Or a non-avian dinosaur

 

Or a monotreme like the platypus

 

Or could be some kind of fish. Caviar for breakfast, not bad.

on the subject of Klingon food. It's strange that this very martial culture that has to show off its killing and hunting capacity all the time really likes eating worms and eggs. Did they kill off their game animals so long ago they don't have much tradition of meat eating?

 

We clearly see it's eggs with a shell and yellow yolk though, not caviar-like.
Of course that still could mean that it's from a marine reptile (something like an ichthyosaur) or a fully marine bird.
Or some sort of exotic fish from a planet where they evolved hard-shelled eggs for whatever reason.

 

ah I forgot, yes

 

Reading this thread, I am reminded of the scene in Galaxy Quest where they each get their own special replicated dish. Alan Rickman's "just like mother used to make," was one of many perfectly delivered lines.

A little variation in food is always the telltale sign of homemade vs store bought food, so I'm guessing that variation isn't quite there with replicated food. But there's also seemingly endless variety in terms of what you can get, which might make up for the lack of variation in each individual dish. And you could add your own variation each time as well. I do wonder if certain cooking effects or textures might be more difficult to replicate. Like, if you ordered a grilled cheese sammie, would the bread taste grilled? Would it have the right crunchy, toasted texture?

 

I mean each time we see replicated food, it does look perfectly delectable. And in that first season episode with the Cobra and Dog aliens, the alien ambassadors were apparently unable to distinguish replicated meat from the genuine article until Riker clued them in.

 

The fact is, they use replicator tech in the holodecks too. By all rights, everything they interact with, that is generated from matter/energy transference seems virtually indistguishable from real, to both them, & frankly us as well

It's only through the odd comment from someone that we're given the impression that it is in any degree lesser. So I have to assume that degree is miniscule, & only they who have the experienced palate to differentiate between the two even know the difference

An off example like Scotty's Scotch can be explained by it being not Scotch at all, but synthehol, which I presume is a near beer type product never meant to be a recreated Scotch

Troi & her chocolate OTOH, I think she's just being extremely persnickety about the miniscule nuanced difference imho

 

In Troi's defense, I have to agree that there is a substantial difference between the Hot Fudge Sundae's you get at restaurants-even the ones that specialize in Ice Cream-and the Hot Fudge Sundaes you can make at home.

So a Replicator-made Hot Fudge Sundae might taste like one made at Baskins Robbins or Dairy Queen...

 

That is why I believe criticisms of the replicator depend on how much "real" food would benefit a script; if replicated food genuinely uniformly tasted "off" in a way that is clearly artificial/synthetic, morale would similarly take a consistent hit. I'll buy that a given replicated meal (i.e., a particular recipe) tastes the same each time, but an undeniably phony quality would be psychologically damaging to the crew of a starship on a long-term mission.

 

But that's what's interesting though. Isn't something that seems perfectly the same to you eventually going to seem phony?

It's still not a complete indictment, because it's a dynamic machine. Just alter the recipe, or description. A machine is only as good as the person wielding it. I actually like to think that when the characters talk down about the replicated food, it's actually a failure on them, & not necessarily the tech. Just get better at using it

In general, I've always felt that the one contrarian aspect to this show is that the awesome tech they have at their disposal is almost never used as creatively as I think I'd use it, or any of us might, & it makes me wonder if they might've been commenting on how luxury breeds complacency. People who have everything are bloody dull people lol

That dude drank hot Earl Grey tea for a decade. Be a little adventurous, Mr. Adventurer.

 

It's a writer change. David Gerrold felt that if the transporter can work, it can also perfectly recreate objects, including food. Later writers wanted there to be a difference between replicated food and 'real' food.