Cuisine

Aiaos boasts a wide range of cuisines, although fewer than on worlds with a wider climatic range.

Major Culinary Traditions

• Northern Cainan Cuisine
• Southern Cainan Cuisine
• Talahaean Cuisine
• Cathlaean Cuisine
• Moraean Cuisine
• Sutan Cuisine

Other Cuisines

Halfling travelling bands have developed a rich fusion cuisine, adopting elements from everywhere they travel and swapping recipes with everyone they meet. The stockwains maintain stores of less perishable foods - potatoes, beets, rice and cereals (usually wheat, barley and rye,) dried fruit and tomatoes, oils, vinegars, dried herbs and spices, beer, wine and spirits - and they excel in foraging for and making good use of local meats, greens and fresh fruit and vegetables. The most famous elements of halfling cuisine are a range of breads and hearty stews, and breakfasts of cured meat and eggs, typically served fried.
Scutora holts have a more insular and less inventive cuisine, designed mostly to provide for the scutors going through their skin-lives. Soy and algae grown on top of the holt are staples of this cuisine, with spices and herbs brought home by travellers supplying variation to a range of soups and broths. Local ingredients are sourced as the holt travels, and incorporated into the soups.
Seafolk have a rich tradition of cooking with fish and other seafood, seaweeds and other marine vegetation. Of necessity, most food is served raw and salty, and even those dishes that are cooked are usually simmered in brine. The surface areas of the Sea Kingdom cries often favour barbe­cue and skillet frying, almost out of a delight in the flames used and the caramelisation achieved.
Below the surface of Aiaos lie the Underhollows. In the absence of sunlight there are few green plants, and instead, those who dwell in the Underhollows use various species of darklight flora and mushrooms as their staples, with protein from burrowing rodents and giant insects and arachnids. The ash Elves refine an idiosyncratic range of pungent spices from lichens, making their cuisine a rather acquired taste, while the deep dwarves prefer to let their food 'speak for itself.' Deep Gnomes raise a subterranean strain of bee, and the dark, bitter-sweetness of 'deep honey' is ubiquitous in their cooking.