Chapter 8: Suspense Of Taste
Due to modern society’s protection of personal privacy, the youth and Xiang Weiguo’s couple did not continue to press Xiang Chuan, but instead shifted the topic to the lunch just now and the yam cake they were currently eating.
Lin Yu—that is, the youth whom the three siblings’ parents regarded as an honored guest—picked up another piece of yam cake again. The apple cut into fine shreds was easy to chew, and generally, it could be swallowed after two or three bites, but Lin Yu still savored it repeatedly, keeping the outer skin of the yam cake in his mouth until it fully dissolved before reluctantly swallowing.
“This is truly a work of divine craftsmanship. I never expected that simply wrapping it with this outer layer could make the fruit so delicious.”
Xiang Weiguo took a bite of the orange filling yam cake and couldn’t help but exclaim. Having been engaged in the food processing business for many years, he had a pursuit of deliciousness engraved into his soul, so he had always been dedicated to improving the taste of liquid food and solid food. His attitude of striving for perfection had also made Yue Xiang Group, established less than twenty years ago, the most influential food processing enterprise in the Third Fleet.
Yue Xiang’s research on diet had now also fallen into a bottleneck. After all, the variety of usable ingredients and the development of liquid food by various fleets over two ten thousand years had left little room for further exploration and improvement. His initiative to connect with Lin Yu this time was also to obtain some new breakthroughs from the traditional agriculture of the First Fleet.
But he hadn’t expected the opportunity for a breakthrough to be far away at the edge of the sky yet right before his eyes.
Although he had wasted a luxurious gourmet meal at Mondo Hotel, it could still be considered a gain. After all, after this lunch, Yue Xiang Group had a new breakthrough point.
“The yam adds some texture and milk fragrance to them, so it has more layers when eating.” Xiang Chuan picked up a piece and tasted it. She had to admit that the fruit flavor now was even more sour, sweet, and rich. She didn’t know what technology was used to preserve it for so long. “Besides fruit, other sweets can also be put inside.”
“Won’t that make it too sweet?” Xiang Weiguo immediately grasped the key point.
“Just pair it with some sour and sweet juice to eat.” Xiang Chuan raised the orange juice in her hand.
So that’s how it is—pairing juice and yam cake for sales… indeed a good idea. Xiang Weiguo nodded while listening, silently noting it in his mind.
Lin Yu looked at Xiang Weiguo’s somewhat distracted appearance and had some calculations in his mind. If nothing unexpected happened, Yue Xiang would next take action in the production of yam cake and juice. The yams that no one asked for in various pharmacies would probably welcome unprecedented changes. By the next fleet exchange year, the Third Fleet, holding these two powerful weapons, would undoubtedly change its previous predicament of being ignored and become the exchange target that various fleets vied to please. He touched his chin: should he seek an opportunity for his hometown’s First Fleet?
With their respective thoughts in mind, Lin Yu and Xiang Weiguo simultaneously steered the topic away from lunch and the dim sum before them, starting to chat about the recent movements of the First Fleet.
Xiang Xue found it boring to listen to, so she pulled Xiang Chuan and ran back to the entertainment room together. Xiang Qi stayed behind because he was interested in the movements of various fleets.
Being pulled by Xiang Xue into the entertainment room shared by the three siblings, seeing the large screen inside like those in 21st-century arcade halls, along with various realistic guns and steering wheels, Xiang Chuan once again had the real feeling that “my family is very wealthy.” If it weren’t for the fact that everyone in modern times had a terminal equivalent to a personal computer, this room would probably also have three desks with top-config computers.
Xiang Xue placed the yam cake she had casually taken away just now on the small coffee table in the entertainment room. The two sat on the floor, and Xiang Xue couldn’t wait to grab another piece of yam cake and stuff it into her mouth.
“Sister, is there a lot of this kind of delicious food in the information turbulence?”
She asked with sparkling eyes. This was the first time in her life that she had eaten such fragrant and sweet food.
“I don’t know. If you think about it, our ancestors spent more than ten thousand years in history, and there is a dietary history of more than ten thousand years in the information turbulence… maybe even longer.”
This was indeed Xiang Chuan’s heartfelt words. She herself only remembered a portion of the home-cooked side dishes and simple desserts from the 21st century. When making cakes and bread, she had to repeatedly check the recipe. The two recipe books she had ordered along with the oven and air fryer when buying them, she still hadn’t finished reading carefully to this day. Every country and every region has its own characteristic gourmet food, let alone a multi-ethnic country like Huaxia where even two neighboring cities have different dietary styles.
“More than ten thousand years—if one new food is invented each year, that’s more than ten thousand kinds. That’s enough for me to eat a different one every month without repetition.”
Xiang Xue thought about it, and tears of sorrow and indignation over humanity losing its gourmet food history instantly flowed from the corners of her mouth.
“Far more than ten thousand kinds. Just take this yam cake as an example.” Xiang Chuan picked up a piece of yam cake and took a bite. “The orange filling one in my hand is one kind, the apple filling one in your hand is another kind. Adding red beans and mung beans to the yam part of these two yam cakes turns them into new foods again.”
Is it this perfunctory? Xiang Xue wanted to complain, but upon careful thought, the solid food she usually ate was also considered new food just by changing the vegetables and grains. She surprisingly couldn’t refute the ancient Earth people’s classification of gourmet food varieties. Thinking of this, she couldn’t help but bite hard into the yam cake, but the sweet dim sum quickly soothed her slight displeasure.
“It’s so delicious,” she couldn’t help but exclaim. “Why did our ancestors forget the method to make such delicious things?”
Xiang Chuan searched through her “memory” and found no related records in the history she had learned in modern times. She casually replied: “Who knows, maybe tastes changed after going to the universe.”
“But we all think this yam cake is delicious.”
Faced with this doubt, Xiang Chuan also felt puzzled. Clearly, the current staple food had become foul-smelling liquid that 21st-century people couldn’t stomach and solid food that, although she hadn’t eaten it, should not be very tasty judging from her brother and sister’s attitudes. Yet, the three elders and her brother and sister, upon first contact with food made using 21st-century cooking techniques, could use their taste buds to discern that dough drops and yam cake were “delicious.”
Since modern humans retained the concept of “deliciousness,” why not develop the kitchen AI to list out common ingredients for themselves, instead of settling for unpalatable modern food?
This strange conflict momentarily even made Xiang Chuan feel as if she had transmigrated into a sci-fi web novel with a very casual setting. Otherwise, how could she encounter a satisfying read plot of “21st-century ancients conquering future people with food” on the first day of transmigration?
If it got even more melodramatic, perhaps that unfamiliar youth would develop curiosity toward her, thinking “Hmph, an interesting woman,” and then unfold a clichéd plot of a little chef strategizing to conquer a domineering president with her.
Thinking about it, Xiang Chuan shivered. Such a plot was fine to read during student days, but for her, who had been beaten down by society, experiencing it would only make her skin crawl.
Moreover, that youth’s demeanor and mannerisms were very much like her university professor back then, who was nearly 60 years old. Modern people had an average lifespan of 800 years, and her modern self was truly 16 years old. If she really got involved with him in something, from a 21st-century perspective… the scene was too beautiful to imagine; it would make her lose all worldly desires.
She had truly enjoyed the freedom of making up the setting on the fly while writing.
