Dorei kara no Kitai to Hyouka no sei de Sakushu dekinai no daga - Ch. 8

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I'm willing to accept a lot of stupidity in my mindless wish fulfillment manga, but the idea that they wouldn't know about fermentation is a step too far. I mean, isn't there alcohol in this world? (I'll be honest, I don't actually remember but there's no way someone wrote an isekai without including some fantasy tavern scene) People have been fermenting food since before recorded history. Even if it takes some time and a lot of trial and error to master it, it's practically impossible not to discover it.
well, fermentation for alcohol goes back to 7000 BCE, while fermentation for bread goes back to 1500 BCE. Let's take it as they live between those two years.
 
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Before I go on an unhinged rant I just want to be clear that I am in fact enjoying this manga. It's fun watching the MC twist himself into knots out of insecurity. Also nothing personal against awake1122 or Rafaelrgm. You bring up good points, I just happen to disagree
Now:

He did mention it was used in alcohol, but I'm not sure if that was just him reminiscing about japan, or if alcohol has made an appearance in the story. The thing is, fermentation is something that just happens. You don't need to understand it. People were fermenting things for millenia (quite likely before homo sapiens had even evolved) before anyone had any idea what the mechanism was, and they still managed to figure out how to leaven their bread. Fermentation is both vital and unavoidable in a pre-refrigeration society.
Yes, in a magic world you could have some sort of preservation magic, but given the setting I don't think that would be available to the common people. Something that definitely is in the story is references to people going hungry and MC wanting to feed everyone and end all that. Specifically when he was making fertilizer, I believe. That part I don't have a problem with since manufacturing effective fertilizer is a pretty recent development. In fact widespread instances of famine were quite common until a certain german chemist figured out how to manufacture nitrogen rich fertilizer, thus kicking off the green revolution and an explosion in population. (he would later go on to pioneer the use of chlorine gas in world war 1, drive his wife to suicide, and found the company that made zyclon b - great guy!)
So we know that commoners are living in a scarcity situation and probably don't have access to any preservation magic, which all but guarantees that they'll have witnessed fermentation and have sufficient motivation to make use of it, because again, it just happens. Leave some fruit out for a while? Alcohol. And they'll want to drink it not just for fun, but because it's less likely to give them dysentery. They won't know why but you don't need to know why.
Leave some wet flour out for a couple of days? Sourdough. Nice and fluffy and with a pleasant tang.
Don't feel like making sourdough? long before anyone knew that yeast was a microscopic fungus that poops alcohol and CO2 they were using leftovers from the brewing process to leaven their bread. (they called it barm) How did they figure that out? I don't know, but I'd guess someone at some point needed some water to make bread and that was the cleanest stuff available (they'd have already figured out that drinking beer made them less violently ill then drinking from the river everyone throws their shit in. Not that they would understand the mechanism, but people are pretty good at making observations).
And it's not just yeast. One of the oldest ways of preserving food is salting it. Just laying on so much of the stuff that you have to soak it for hours to make it edible again. But salt ain't cheap and we're talking about a populace of commoners where it's already been established that hunger is an issue so maybe they didn't have enough salt to go the full way. Guess what? You've just set the stage for fermentation. Lacto bacillus bacteria is hardy enough to survive salt levels that kill other more harmful bacteria so if somebody skimped on the salt a little guess what? you just discovered pickling.
These are all things that are practically bound to happen because again: it's been established that there is a population of commoners who are dealing with scarce resources and don't have access to refrigeration (magic or otherwise) It is 99.999% guaranteed that they'd be making use of fermentation
I can see how even if they mastered lactic fermentation they would not necessarily know how to use alcoholic fermentation outside of just letting fruits do their thing. Afaik it was the case in Japan where they used lactic fermentation for nearly everything but didn't isolate and use yeast before europeans introduced it. In a Japanese context i can see how using yeast in food can be perceived as a concept that was a novelty brought by the outsider. You'd be surprised at how many culture have bread that doesn't use yeast or fermentation.

Also even that aside, they say themselves that humans eat bread. Bread is not part of their culture and it's possible they were only exposed to very low quality bread as slaves and are foreign to that knowledge.
 
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I can see how even if they mastered lactic fermentation they would not necessarily know how to use alcoholic fermentation outside of just letting fruits do their thing. Afaik it was the case in Japan where they used lactic fermentation for nearly everything but didn't isolate and use yeast before europeans introduced it. In a Japanese context i can see how using yeast in food can be perceived as a concept that was a novelty brought by the outsider. You'd be surprised at how many culture have bread that doesn't use yeast or fermentation.

Also even that aside, they say themselves that humans eat bread. Bread is not part of their culture and it's possible they were only exposed to very low quality bread as slaves and are foreign to that knowledge.
That... is actually a pretty good point.
I would say that isekais tend to go for fantasy worlds modeled on medieval europe (where they were definitely eating leavened bread) but since it is a parallel world I suppose that doesn't mean much.
Still, just on a gut level it rubs me wrong to say that a culture that has bread for a long period of time wouldn't come up with some form of leavening. as @yhmirr pointed out there's archaeological evidence of leavened bread going back to 1500 BCE (I think I've seen some articles that push it back a bit further, but in that range in any case) but that's just the evidence we have. The oldest evidence for unleavened bread goes back something like 14000 years. I just can't bring myself to believe that people could have been making bread for something like 12000 years without someone leaving a dough out a little too long and getting some yeast colonies going.
In the case of japan I would chalk it up to the fact that wheat wasn't introduced there until europeans arrived ( I think. I could be completely mistaken.) Up until that point I believe that the grains they were using were relatively low in gluten and therefore unsuitable for leavening. Same with the americas where maize was the staple grain and similarly low in gluten.
If they already had wheat it just... I don't know... breaks my suspension of disbelief to say that they needed some reincarnator from japan to teach them about making leavened bread.
In any case it's a silly fantasy manga so I suppose I shouldn't be taking it that seriously.
 

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My boy finally got some win just so author can throw him to spider web next :nyoron:
 
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In the case of japan I would chalk it up to the fact that wheat wasn't introduced there until europeans arrived ( I think. I could be completely mistaken.)
Nope, introduced via China. Didn't become popular until the 20th century though, in part because it didn't have a lot of uses and was expensive (Japanese wheat was much lower yield)
 
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I'm willing to accept a lot of stupidity in my mindless wish fulfillment manga, but the idea that they wouldn't know about fermentation is a step too far. I mean, isn't there alcohol in this world? (I'll be honest, I don't actually remember but there's no way someone wrote an isekai without including some fantasy tavern scene) People have been fermenting food since before recorded history. Even if it takes some time and a lot of trial and error to master it, it's practically impossible not to discover it.
well, most of these fantasy worlds are written to be some of the dumbest places possible...

like having magic and no one thinking or attempting to try and restore garbage slaves to flip at a profit using magic
 
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Can't work out if the goddess is actually a bitch or not 🤨
yes*

she's simply that one teacher from the 16 year old clip of a coach stating they know if kids do well with praise or scorn, before scorning a kid who says they do better with praise but becomes the national champion
 
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This manga (so far) and this spoiler-filled comment section left me like MC here:

Screenshot-100.png
 
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well, most of these fantasy worlds are written to be some of the dumbest places possible...

like having magic and no one thinking or attempting to try and restore garbage slaves to flip at a profit using magic
To be fair the main character has god-tier healing ability that's presumably above what anyone can do. Who knows if it's even possible for anyone else in the world to do anything comparable? And even for the people who could, they're probably making insane money doing doctor work for armies or nobles or whatever and would probably scoff at the idea of a "side hustle" in the slave trade.
 
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I'm willing to accept a lot of stupidity in my mindless wish fulfillment manga, but the idea that they wouldn't know about fermentation is a step too far. I mean, isn't there alcohol in this world? (I'll be honest, I don't actually remember but there's no way someone wrote an isekai without including some fantasy tavern scene) People have been fermenting food since before recorded history. Even if it takes some time and a lot of trial and error to master it, it's practically impossible not to discover it.
I give it some leeway in a world with magic involved. And even if the core techniques(ie fermentation) are involved, that doesn't guarantee civilizations will have figured out how to use it to intentionally make certain things. The potato chips are a perfect example.

It also depends on how old humanity is, their numbers, and how information spreads in the other world(affecting humanities ability to do trial and error). As well as the general situation of humanity(a lot of food discoveries are due to people trying to find more ways to make inedible things edible, or foods tried in desperation/ignorance/hunger.

But of course this is putting way more thought into it than the author has(which is probably almost none, other than minimal research on how fermentation/bread making works)
 
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First? It happens more than once? :kek:
He's gonna end up being kidnapped by someone from like a bordering country and BS/4D chess is way into bringing peace between nations 8D;

^ This is a joke/speculation, not actual legit spoilers (as far as i know lol)
 

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