Chapter 409

Pepper

Now then, I was damn surprised by those super sumo wrestlers, but that aside, it's a fun dinner time. Come on! Everyone, enjoy this delicious barbecue to your heart's content.

"It's so gooood!"

"This is really delicious, Onee-chan!"

"Hehe, right? Yuki, Masa, you both eat a lot now."

Hehehe, Yuki-kun and Masa-kun are overjoyed to be with their beloved Shizune-oneechan. It's fine to leave things to Nina-san like this.

"Um... Machi-san? What is that pot over there?"

"Ah, that? It's the skin from a super giant boar's limb. Well, it's a trotter stew, you see."

Ah. Yuzuki-chan is interested in the super giant boar limb skin stew that looks kinda like offal stew.

"Ah, in that case, I'll try just a little."

"So good! This thick texture is irresistible! But it's a bit too thick, gets boring. Hey, Jung, don't you have any pepper?"

Shark, for her part, was chomping into a thick-cut 'inoteki' instead of a tonteki, but perhaps wanting a change in taste, she started asking if there was any pepper.

"Ah, now that you mention it, pepper's out of stock. We've been doing barbecues a lot lately."

"Gaaah~, this is why! I'm telling you, meat is no good without pepper!"

Oh come on, don't be ridiculous.

This meat was carefully marinated with my super great salt, and Nina-san checked the maturation level daily and said today's batch is the best before serving it. There's no way there's any gaminess, so savor the flavor of the ingredient itself more.

"Aah~ now that I know we don't have it, I want it even more! Aah~ pepper, peppeeer! I'd buy it for double the price right now~~!"

Good grief, pepper this, pepper that, how annoying.

Hmm, but pepper, huh. Indeed, I like pepper too. If it's there, I tend to sprinkle it on without thinking. But even I wouldn't pay double the price for it.

That's right, speaking of pepper, it's famous that it was considered to have value equivalent to gold.

But as I just thought, probably no one today sees that much value in pepper. However, during the Age of Exploration in Europe, that was the case.

But, why was that?

Of course, one reason is that difficulties in distribution drove the price up. But there's another reason why it was so prized, even called the seeds of paradise. The reason is that in Europe during the Age of Exploration, nobles considered eating meat a status symbol, and due to crude preservation techniques, they ate rotten meat as is.

Yeah, you might think, "No way nobles ate rotten meat..."

But they did. Because that was the nobles' status symbol.

And the rarer the animal's meat, the more valuable it was, and nobles who could obtain such meat could show off their power and gourmet tastes to those around them, like "Look at this! See what I've got!"

Conversely, commoners and peasants were strictly bound by an overwhelming class system that said, "You lot shouldn't eat meat, fools! Eat your carrots!"

Besides that, the Earth was flat, water was poisonous, and since getting sick was all because of bad blood, they'd vigorously bleed sick people. They didn't bathe, and having head lice was the default state for nobles back then.

It was a seriously messed-up era where they genuinely believed such things were correct, so modern sensibilities and common sense don't apply at all.

As an aside, Galileo Galilei, who is said to have muttered "And yet it moves." He proposed the heliocentric theory in that messed-up era, and boy, did that cause trouble. He was immediately targeted by the church and was thoroughly beaten down in court as a great sinner who defied God.

Well, but if in the cities back then, due to poor sewer systems, they could hardly drink proper water, and instead drank alcohol all the time, making everyone alcoholics, then I guess that's not so strange either.

Furthermore, in Europe at the time, the sanitary conditions were terrible, with people throwing sewage from pots out the window just a few houses down from where they were selling bread and meat. So eating slightly rotten meat or bread with bugs wasn't that big a deal.

Still, even so, rotten meat tastes bad, and if it smells rotten when you eat it, you'd go "Eww."

That's where pepper comes in, pepper's time to shine. Coat any rotten meat with pepper and grill it until browned, and hey presto! It becomes very delicious, which is why it came to be called the seeds of paradise.

Yes, this is the reason pepper was so prized.

So, if you brought this value system directly into a fantasy world where magic is prevalent and tried something like "Pepper has value equal to gold!", you'd be stepping on a massive landmine. Well, probably it's often replaced by well-refined salt or sugar.

And why is that? The reason is the same as in the modern world.

In a world where magic is highly developed, there's no need to force yourself to eat rotten meat; you can just have someone who can use ice magic freeze it solid. Then the need for pepper that existed in the Age of Exploration disappears, and its value drops to about what it is today.

Yeah, if they're more skilled, they'd probably even have magic like 'chilled' storage.

In other words, instead of one of the three sacred treasures of modern science, the genuine article, the home appliance refrigerator, you'd have wizards or magic tools do the job.

For example, if the number of people who can use magic is as high as the number of ordinary driver's license holders in the modern world, then there would be plenty. If it's more like the number of commercial or large vehicle license holders, it might be a bit harder, but even then, most large stores should employ a user of freezing magic.

And if it's at the level of specialized or large special vehicle licenses, then perhaps only nobles could hire them. But even then, if they can be hired for a wage similar to that of a crane operator by modern standards, it's cheap for a noble.

However, if it's at the level of a pilot's license for a Cessna or helicopter, then only great nobles should be able to hire them. Well, in modern terms, it's probably at the level where super-rich who own private helicopters or private jets could hire such freezing magic wizards.

So, in such a magic-prevalent fantasy world, this kind of exchange might occur at a court banquet...

"Haa... This is a very delicious meat, but somehow it feels lacking... If only we had some pepper for this..."

"What did you say? Did you just say pepper, my lord? That stuff that's just spicy and makes you want to sneeze!? Ha! That's something poor people who can't even hire a freezing mage use to reluctantly mask the stench of rotten meat, isn't it? All the meat here is of the highest quality, frozen and preserved by my expert freezing mage! Before such supreme meat, how dare you say such a thing is necessary??"

"U-, w-, that is..."

"Hahaha! Exactly as the Marquis says!"

"Ohohohoho! My, how dreadful. Talking about pepper in this age of prevalent magic..."

Then, Baron Gootara, who until now had seemed listless, just yawning, for some reason suddenly perks up, his eyes changing as the topic turns to food, and he steps forward.

"That, I cannot let pass! Just where, exactly, is this freezer-burned rubbish meat supposed to be the best!?"

"W-, what did you say?!"

Yeah, well, you can imagine the rest.