Panhuman Cuisine

[xsampa]

There have been many attempts at fusion cuisine between different cuisine. What if a rationalist, panhumanist government attempted to merge all the cuisines of the planet into one, regardless of geographic diversity, using common ingredients such as potatoes, wheat, chili peppers, chicken, garlic, onions, spinach and soybeans?

 

[connorCD]

You're basically going to have a rather disgusting mass of food that's guaranteed to give you diabetes the moment you take the first bite.

 

[L4a1]

Food designed by the Government? I'm sure they will set up a committee.
Remember the Camel is a horse designed by a committee.
If you are lucky by the time they eliminate all the foods they don't approve of for one reason or another you will be left with water.

 

[Arkenfolm]

So basically a combined McDonalds and Taco Bell? Yuck.

 

[Hnau]

Hmmmm. Very interesting idea. I don’t know how to even start thinking how that might turn out

 

[overninethousands]

LMAO - I thought you mean "cooking panhumanists". More seriously, how about,for a start, a kind of culinary database where similar recipes across the world are grouped ? for example, La Réunion island "Kari" is close from many, many other recipes from africa, Madagascar, India and SE Asia - for the simple La Réunion is a cultural crossroad between these places.

 

[Albidoom]

What if a rationalist, panhumanist government attempted to merge all the cuisines of the planet into one?

A government that tries to attempt that can't be called rationalist.

 

[Histor32]

Food designed by the Government? I'm sure they will set up a committee.
Remember the Camel is a horse designed by a committee.
If you are lucky by the time they eliminate all the foods they don't approve of for one reason or another you will be left with water.

Flint water at that

 

[GodoftheTranses]

Honestly yea this probably just isnt a good idea, now to make my comment not just more repeating of "this is a bad idea" Ill actually suggest an alternative: How about instead of combining a bunch of different dishes from all Earth cultures to try to make something unique but still good, we make multiple dishes that are combinations of several dishes from different Earth cultures, maybe even having to have one dish from each continent, this would not only be an easier premise to use since combination dishes are already a thing and there isnt such a large pallet, especially considering that there are cultures that we haven't even made contact with

 

[jerseyguy]

Tap water + a basic grain or starch crop (rice, wheat, potatoes, etc.). Meat was a luxury that many people didn't have more than a few times a week well into the twentieth century, but much of a typical person's diet comes from one of the crops I listed.

The eucharist is a good candidate, if it counts as a cuisine. Catholics are the world's 2nd largest religious denomination, and tossing in the other applicable christian denominations could get to a sizable plurality of humanity. Sunni Islam is the world's largest religious denomination, but as far as I know there is no universal item consumed in their religious services.

To be honest, globalization taken to its logical conclusion would lead to quite an underwhleming pan-human cuisine in the far-future. Some kind of synthetic nutrient shake or meal powder is a good candidate, it'll be some utterly tasteless garbage, its ingredients will be decided as a compromise to satisfy various religious requirements and keep displaced climate refugees from starving. As a side effect of most indigenous and/or cultures dying, human food will heavily borrow from some combination of US fast food (beef burgers replaced with synthetic meat of course), Chinese Food, and Indian Food. It wouldn't be food as much as nutrition + status signaling.

There was a South Park episode where immigrants from the year 4005 travel back in time, but I don't think they ever touch on the future people's food.

 

[jerseyguy]

Esperanto speakers don't have their own cuisine, but fusions of two or more nationalities' cookings are common, and some Esperanto publications include recipes. From wikipedia:

As Esperanto speakers are from all over the world, and families whose children speak Esperanto natively usually have parents from two vastly different countries, recipes incorporating elements from different countries are naturally born. Traditional foods are also enjoyed in settings where a native wouldn't normally mix or eat them.

One cookbook is Internacie kuiri “Cooking Internationally” by Maria Becker-Meisberger, published by FEL (Flemish Esperanto League), Antwerp 1989, ISBN 90-71205-34-7. Another is Manĝoj el sanigaj plantoj “Meals from Healthy Vegetable Dishes” by Zlata Nanić, published by BIO-ZRNO, Zagreb 2002, ISBN 953-97664-5-1.

Some Esperanto periodicals, such as MONATO include recipes from time to time.

 

[Mike D]

Tap water + a basic grain or starch crop (rice, wheat, potatoes, etc.). Meat was a luxury that many people didn't have more than a few times a week well into the twentieth century, but much of a typical person's diet comes from one of the crops I listed.

Where I'm from we have Scouse - it's a basic stew of meat (my mum swears by half stewing beef, half neck of lamb), potatoes and veg. For the weeks you were too skint to afford meat you had Blind Scouse with just the veg and potatoes. Apparently when my parents were kids my nans would regularly have a pot of Scouse on the hob all week and just throw in a handful of whatever meat and veg they could afford each day to make up what had been eaten the night before.

I'd say 'stew' in all it's forms is probably the closest you're going to get to global food. There can't be many cultures or countries which don't have some kind of combination of meat or fish and vegetables cooked together as one of their staple dishes - whether you call it Scouse, Hot Pot, Irish Stew, Curry, Bourguignon, Ratatouille, Gumbo or Tagine I'd say it's pretty much a universal poor man's meal.

 

[chankljp]

I guess we do have something similar to this in OTL, in the form of 'Soviet cuisine' in the USSR, which was deliberately designed to be simple to cook with limited ingredients that should (in theory) be accessible thought the Union, while incorporating elements from the existing cuisine from all the SSRs. Hence you have everything from the Central Asian influenced 'Shashlik', the Ukraine 'Borscht', and the French-influenced Russian dish 'Olivier salad' all belonging in the same cuisine group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_cuisine

Like others have already suggested, if you try to do this globally, you will most likely end up with either some sort uninspired, tasteless, but cheaply produced nutrition paste that does not offend any religion's culinary taboos and can be easily produced worldwide; Or some sort of 'fusion' cuisine, in that while it might incorporate elements and way of cooking from other cultures, it will still be dominated by the culture that put in it in place (Such as in the case of Soviet cuisine, the influence was overwhelmingly from Russia and Ukraine).

 

[xsampa]

What I had in mind when I wrote about "panhuman" cuisine was not some kind of bland "food substitute" like Soylent but a 'fusion' cuisine that combined elements and cooking methods from other cultures.

 

[Tessitore]

I'd say 'stew' in all it's forms is probably the closest you're going to get to global food. There can't be many cultures or countries which don't have some kind of combination of meat or fish and vegetables cooked together as one of their staple dishes - whether you call it Scouse, Hot Pot, Irish Stew, Curry, Bourguignon, Ratatouille, Gumbo or Tagine I'd say it's pretty much a universal poor man's meal.

Also soup, porridge (made from various grains) and pancakes (the details may vary but wherever there is a suitable carb something pancake-esque has evolved). Dumplings are a maybe since while the general concept of "dumpling" exists in practically every country in the northern hemisphere, the exact definition varies a lot. Also pilaf/pilau/paella/plov etc gets an honourable mention for existing in various forms throughout most of Eurasia.

Regarding the idea on the OP though, I'm going to have to agree with those who say it would be a bad idea. By the time you've eliminated everything that there's a cultural objection to, everything that large chunks of the population can't digest (e.g. dairy), and everything that's only available in certain regions, there isn't a whole lot left. Then there's the various cultural culinary preferences, the fact that some things are more easily available/cheaper in some regions than others, and people generally being people. Best case scenario is that you get something that everyone hates equally.

I mean, there's that planetary health diet I heard about recently, which was worked out scientifically based on nutritional requirements and environmental impact, but suffers from the major problem of not really taking local availability into account and not fitting with the current diets of any culture on Earth (Americans and Europeans eat too much meat, South-East Asians eat too much fish, Africans eat too many starchy vegetables, etc). The fact that the amounts are specific enough in a very scientific way to make it feel like rationing doesn't really help things either.

 

[jerseyguy]

Where I'm from we have Scouse - it's a basic stew of meat (my mum swears by half stewing beef, half neck of lamb), potatoes and veg. For the weeks you were too skint to afford meat you had Blind Scouse with just the veg and potatoes. Apparently when my parents were kids my nans would regularly have a pot of Scouse on the hob all week and just throw in a handful of whatever meat and veg they could afford each day to make up what had been eaten the night before.

I'd say 'stew' in all it's forms is probably the closest you're going to get to global food. There can't be many cultures or countries which don't have some kind of combination of meat or fish and vegetables cooked together as one of their staple dishes - whether you call it Scouse, Hot Pot, Irish Stew, Curry, Bourguignon, Ratatouille, Gumbo or Tagine I'd say it's pretty much a universal poor man's meal.

It's almost impossible to find a combination of ingredients that would be used in every region though. I would expect fish and seafood in an island country or a coastal region, but less in a landlocked places like Afghanistan or much of Central Africa. Bak Choi would be a popular ingredient in China and the Philippines, but less so in outside of East Asia.

 

[Tessitore]

I think that his point was that the ingredients may differ from place to place but the basic stew "format" as it were is near universal. Like how porridge is recognisable as such whether it's made from oats, barley, rice, millet, sorghum, corn or wheat and regardless of what the local name for it is.

Which is probably the most feasible approach to the question in the OP; rather than trying to come up with universal dishes (which is going to be a non-starter for reasons already mentioned) come up with "formats" that are very forgiving in terms of ingredient variations.