Speculation and Worldbuilding: Pony Cultural Foods · 12:26am Sep 28th, 2015
For today’s worldbuilding exercise, let’s look at something that is at once universal and distinctive. Everyone eats food. At the same time, eating unfamiliar food can be a very alien experience. Food is a big part of cultural and geographic identity. Real life cuisine has countless gradations and variations. The ingredients and resources available give each real life culture a distinct history and evolution.
Ponies would be no different. The individual abilities and culture of each pony tribe would create a distinct set of signature dishes and foods for each one. But what ingredients would each tribe have used? How would their culture affected their use of those ingredients? What sort of dishes woul result?
Let’s start with earth ponies. We know from the show that earth ponies seem to be the major practitioners of animal husbandry. Things like bees, chickens, cows, and other animals can all provide many food ingredients like eggs, honey, milk (and thus cheese), and many other things. Earth ponies are also the best at agriculture, meaning fruit and wheat are large parts of their diet.
In the dark ages shown in the show, the earth ponies seem to make do with the leftovers a lot of the time. As a result their dishes would probably be simple, with few extras or fancy ingredients. Grass, leaves, and wildflowers are cheap, after all.
Sandwiches, omelets, and salads sound like signature earth pony dishes.
Pegasi have access to consistent weather and high places. This means they can get clean rainwater, and have access to hard to pick plants like mountain flowers and berries. They also have access to very cold temperatures due to high altitudes.
The militaristic nature of pegasi means that they needed compact food for traveling. Some of their food would need to be dense in nutrients and portable, like any military ration.
Things like the granola bar, soup/stew, and ice cream were probably invented by pegasi.
Unicorns in the show are shown to be the wealthiest tribe back in Equestrian Middle Ages. This means they could consistently afford more expensive ingredients (pepper, sugar, and salt being some of the most expensive things back in ancient times). They are also able to manipulate things more easily thanks to telekinesis (lets ignore the whole “scissors with finger-holes problem” for now).
Things like taffy, ravioli, and twisted pastries all require some dexterity and work to make, at least without the use of specialized machines.
Then there is the matter of modern pony cuisine. We see a lot of cues taken from real life foods, with variations depending on location. I think it makes sense that modern Equestria is a lot like real first world countries. They have many different types of popular/standardized food, with specialty restaurants and markets that cater to different tastes. Taking cues from many different cultures and combining all that culinary knowledge is the same situation as real life. In this case, the writers using modern food as a shorthand for pony food makes sense.
The ninth in a series of blog posts about meandering mental exercises. If you found this passingly interesting, maybe check out the others?
One: Why do so many Pony works use Human weapons?
Two: Earth Pony Spearfighting
Three: Pegasus Combat and Weapons
Four: What Do the Main Six Drink?
Five: Magical Pony Sports
Six: What Do the Main Six Read?
Seven: Unicorn Combat and Weapons
Eight: Pony Playing Cards—Construction and Symbology
Over and over again I keep expecting to see a pony making a vegetable stir-fry in a wok somewhere and am disappointed when it never appears in the background. Come on guys, it's a no-brainer! It's the original fast food! It's easy! You don't need hands for manipulating a simple large-handled wok scoop!
Edit : Perhaps that's a nifty story idea. Have an OC discover the wok. The conflict would be the struggle to market the idea of the technique? Hmm. Actually, I'm not sure how to make it interesting, not boring. Maybe it's not a good idea after all.
3428723 Sounds more like a scene or background detail in a larger story. Perhaps the adventurous/experimental chef pony character has that as part of their backstory. Perhaps the scene of them importing/discovering the wok opens the story, and sets up a different conflict of them trying to get their restaurant to succeed.
I agree its a bit thin to be the main feature plot
I have always been a little surprised with the popularity of 'finger foods' like sandwiches, mainly because of the whole 'the manipulators are also feet' thing. Then again that might only be a concern if one worked in a dirty area. A pre-meal hot towel might be a fairly common sight in restaurants. Then again, this is the race that handles a lot of things with their mouths.
3478990 I generally picture ponies as eating like dogs/cats; putting their mouths directly on the food. Of course, that approach still raises some questions; the layers of a sandwich don't really stay together if you eat them that way.
Perhaps things like layered sandwiches and hot dogs and so forth are a unicorn invention. Obviously the matters of hygiene would be less of a problem for them. Or you could use the headcanon that pegasi wings can be used to manipulate things, but that always struck me as a bit awkward.
3482588 Actually I wouldn't be surprised if "filled breads", where they mixed food directly into the dough, were fairly common as travel food. Easy to make, if you can make bread you can mix extras into the dough, and self contained. There might be a version of the "Plowman's Lunch" of cheese, bread, and pickles like that.
3482698
This made me think about pasties, pocket pies, calzones, hot pockets, etc.
Now I'm hungry.