@Nod @TetraSky
IIRC there's some kind of superstition at play here too where they believed that not doing that could cause infertility or miscarriages.
Has anyone made a better translation of the WN? IIRC it's getting close to the point where the translation suddenly got terrible, which is around the time
she starts dealing with the famished kids at the orphanage, right?
There's something that's been bugging me lately when I read these. When she makes notes for herself she tends to do so in Japanese, and that might not be usually adressed in such setting as it's a complicated matter, does it have much similarities to what language is spoken in this world? In the manga she doesn't seem to be having any difficulties operating in their language apart of getting names of some things wrong. That said, it means that phonetics are quite similar or identical to that of Japanese, so is grammar? Since she's able to speak in a manner that nobles would even without having been one in this world, that leads me to a question; does she solely rely on her previous experience, since she hasn't read much books in the 1st part? But why then make an effort to introduce "different names" to objects in that world? Only to establish that there is a different system going on? It doesn't seem to be the case, thus my question: has it been covered in the WN? Cuz I don't remember any mentions of that in thre manga, and I'm still curious. What are the differences? Only certain names and the alphabet? Metrics seem to be similar to that of european and so do their customs and such. If that's so simar why bother bringing that up anyway?
Someone please educate me.
@analias@Mojo@kayd
That's one of the things that annoy me: passing as breakthroughs things that are common knowledge from the stone age. We have proof of bread productions dating 14'500 years ago, and Pliny the elder wrote a detailed compendium about the use of different starter and the obtained results; those included beer's foam, pieces of dough from previous batches, fermented fruits, fermented vegetables, fermented milk and residues from the wine production. If a society produces alcoholic beverages, they also have leavened bread; and humanity managed to produce alcohol from any kind of shit they could manage to find.
Also, baking potatoes? Seriously? They date back to the discovery of fire, more or less... If something is considered food, someone already tried to cook into a fire. You know, since it's the most simple and basic way to cook food...
And don't let me start about the Japanese fetish for isekai mayonnaise, a recipe that dates back at least to the 14th century.
Next in the isekai bingo we have sushi and soy sauce...
My understanding of Myne's adaptation to this language is that although OG!Myne wasn't very experienced in the ways of the world, she still picked up enough by interacting with her parents to get the minimum information necessary for language acquisition, which is usually picked up at a very young age anyways. This means that when isekai!Myne took over - which I believe was confirmed by the author to be
OG!Myne remembering her past life as isekai!Myne, but the force of that many memories made it seem as though isekai!Myne took over
(spoilers for P1V2 of the LN, extrapolated from the side story 'Gossiping by the Well') - she still had all of OG!Myne's memories on top of her own experiences. Therefore, she still had all of the basic skills necessary for speaking the language, and that, plus a brain that loves learning and is willing to put in the effort to understand, means that she grasps the language fairly quickly.
I would guess that the 'speaking formal' bit regarding nobles isn't so much a certain grammar format she's using; as you can see in P2V1 of the LN where the High Priest mentions that Myne should say 'I thank you ever so much' instead of 'thank you very much,' she doesn't have the specifics down. I take this to believe that she's simply using the biggest/fanciest words possible, which is probably only possible now that she's gone around doing so much as isekai!Myne and has learned many words.
As for the funny food names, I do think that's simply to emphasize that this is a different world than the one we know. Again, this is my interpretation, but I see it as the fact that no matter what the 'word' a language might use for something like oven, it's still an oven and we have a word for it already, so since we have a direct correlate, there is no need to use whatever the fantasy word may be. However, these fantasy foods are not directly correlative (even though Myne does her best to compare them to what she knows) and as such they are 'different' enough from anything in real life that they receive their own term. If there were other things we came across that didn't have direct correlates, such as strange tools or unique animals, I assume that these would receive fantasy names as well.
I don't know much about the full history of yeast and bread-making, but the way I interpreted Myne's analysis of yeast and bread is that she knows how to make good-quality, consistent yeast. People as poor as her family don't have access to the base materials necessary (beer foam, buying a bunch of spare fruits, sugar, etc.) for its production, nor do people in the lower city seem to have much of an understanding of sanitation to help achieve consistent results. (And even if they did have access to the materials, this sort of bread seems like it would go bad much faster - at some point in the LN it is mentioned that the reason her family's bread crust is so blackened and hard is for preservation's sake.) In the LN, Myne explicitly describes the bread she wants to make with her yeast as 'fluffy,' never as 'leavened,' so I extrapolated from that plus the mention of Freida's family having white bread (LN)/baguettes (manga) - which either way are generally leavened, I believe? - that she wants to perfect yeast in order to make a specific type of consistent and tasty bread, not that yeast was completely unobtainable for those with the proper resources.
Also, in regards to the potatoes, it wasn't just baking the potatoes - that's why Lutz seems disappointed at first, because he's eaten them before - but steaming them. Of course, steaming is also a very old method of preparing food, but although some societies in our world have used it for thousands of years, not every society came across that concept at the same time or used it to the same extent. For me, it seems fair that a society could end up getting by without steaming much food if they had other methods that worked pretty well (again, especially for a poorer family that can't waste time experimenting).
However, this is a lot of me interpreting the materials given by canon and not explicitly stated, so I could straight-up be incorrect.
My complaint is that this is EXACTLY what she ISN'T doing. What she is doing is a childish attempt at sourdough: it is not good quality, it is not consistent and it will not produce fluffy bread. Any baker existing in that world will already have better starters then whatever she could ever produce, if only for the fact they had done that for years...
The yeast we use comes from centuries of domestication and decades of genetic engineering, not from strawberry mold.
This is what happen when all the cooking knowledge of the author come from other manga
Really you can't get around natural yeast being sour without being able to make a monoculture.
Because sourdough is a complex of various yeasts and lactic acid bacteria. At best you could feed it in shorter intervals just before you use it to dilute the LAB and encourage the yeast to grow faster.
If what you want is soft, fluffy bread though, you incorporate eggs butter and milk. Maybe add a steam bath. If you're really bougie., you can make a water-roux/tangzhong.
Ha... after seeing all the spoilers from various comments... I don't feel like reading the manga or the LN anymore even though I was looking forward to Benno building his restaurant and many more plans with the orphanage.
My complaint is that this is EXACTLY what she ISN'T doing. What she is doing is a childish attempt at sourdough: it is not good quality, it is not consistent and it will not produce fluffy bread. Any baker existing in that world will already have better starters then whatever she could ever produce, if only for the fact they had done that for years...
The yeast we use comes from centuries of domestication and decades of genetic engineering, not from strawberry mold.
This is what happen when all the cooking knowledge of the author come from other manga