Mayonnaise is a condiment made by emulsifying egg and oil, usually by drizzling the oil into eggs while whipping furiously. A small amount of acid, either oil or vinegar, is added to stabilize.
Archmund Granavale had read no small number of reincarnation fantasy stories in his past life. He had read good ones. He had read bad ones. And in the bad ones, the reincarnated protagonist, upon being sent from Earth (it was always Earth) to their highly derivative fantasy world, would invent mayonnaise and become immensely rich by selling it.
Because apparently people in fantasy worlds were too stupid to understand how to mix eggs, oil, and acid in order to make a sauce. And so having one basic commonplace piece of knowledge acted as a hack to wealth and power.
Archmund really hated the idea that he was being a living cliche. If there was one thing he hated, it was hackery. Trying to get rich off of selling an extremely easy to replicate sauce seemed like genuine idiocy.
When the idea first floated through his mind, about a week into his training regimen, he’d dismissed it as ridiculous.
Yet a part of him couldn’t deny that if it was stupid but it worked, it wasn’t stupid.
And becoming an independent entrepreneur — or merchant, really, in the parlance of this world — was a potential key to the freedom that could liberate him from the monotony of his normal life.
And then the strength training had started paying off far too quickly than was sensible. On day one, he’d needed a whole hour to do 100 push-ups. By day ten, he’d only needed half an hour. That was an insane rate of growth, though he wasn’t dumb enough to assume it would stay exponential. But 10 days to double his physical weakness strongly suggested that the world operated on different physical rules.
A scientist in his old life, Carl Sagan, had a famous quote: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
Apples. Flour. Sugar. Butter. Eggs. These were ingredients that went into an apple pie, and each of them had a complex origin and supply chain. Plants had to evolve to convert sunlight to sugar, and then some plants had to evolve fruit that concentrated those sugars in a tasty bundle. Seed-bearing grasses had to be domesticated over generations to bear wheat grains. Mammals, with their live birth and milk production, had to evolve and be domesticated as sources of milk, which could be separated into whey and butterfat by churning. And, on the other end, egg-laying animals also had to evolve, with eggs that had a complex protein structure that set when heated.
Mayonnaise was more than just the ingredients that went into it. The emulsion that made up mayonnaise was a complex physical process that involved the entangling of oil, egg protein, and water. It was an emergent property of the universe itself. So if the laws of physics were meaningfully different, mayonnaise might not be possible.
That was how Archmund Granavale justified spending an afternoon in his estate’s kitchens, trying to recreate mayonnaise, instead of finding new and innovative ways to train.
He felt a little bad for the servants, because they were not in the habit of telling him no to anything. And if dinner was late, they would be the ones blamed, even if it was all his fault.
“You’re sure you want to do this, ‘young master?’” asked a maid, Mary.
Mary was just two or three years older than him. She had joined the staff somewhat more recently than the other servants, who had been there for Archmund’s whole life.
Archmund ignored her and cracked two eggs into a mixing bowl. A servant gently placed a jug of seed oil on the counter; another, a pitcher of vinegar and box of salt. Archmund salted the eggs and added just a dash of vinegar.
It was remarkable that chickens, or creatures indistinguishable from them, existed. It was remarkable that seed oils were easily obtainable by the nobility, as opposed to needing to rely on lard or tallow. The nobility could eat well; that said little about the rest of the world.
“Mary, help me whip this.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know, they usually don’t even let me into the kitchen, ‘young master Archie.’”
Her words were dripping with sarcasm.
“My arms are too bookish and weak to whip this egg with any effectiveness. I am a noble with a poor constitution, so I must humbly beg my maidservant for assistance.”
She rolled her eyes. Then she pinched his bicep.
“Wha—”
“Holy shit that’s an actual muscle!” Mary said. “I thought you’d have flabby and useless arms but wow, you’ve actually got something going on there.”
He didn’t feel obligated to tell her that he’d somehow developed these muscles in the course of a single week.
“Will you help me?”
“Surely a noble of your stature can summon your great and powerful noble magic to whip the eggs yourself, or use those muscles which you apparently have.”
“A noble’s magic is to serve the Emperor and Heaven, not to whip some eggs to make sauce.”
“So that’s what we’re making, huh. I think you can manage. Unless…”
Archmund wondered whether Mary was a harbinger of bigger changes. Foreshadowing, he would’ve called it. The Crylaxan Plague had killed a lot of people, and in the aftermath of great plagues, like the Black Death, there were often radical societal changes. The older servants were never lippy with him.
Either that, or she was just young.
“I’ll read Ardur to you. ‘The Imp and the Well,’ maybe.”
Faery tales. Mary loved those. Unfortunately, she wasn’t fully literate, so she needed people like him to read them out loud.
“Throw in ‘The Voice from the Highest Hill’ and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Deal.”
Though now that Archmund thought about it, this might be an interesting test whether skill acquisition operated on the same underlying game logic that personal attributes seemed to. Would it be possible to power-level someone in literacy? Or was it possible that power-leveling was only possible for the rare and privileged few?
Either way, he liked Mary. She was about six inches taller than him, mostly because of age. Her skin was smooth for a member of the working class, but she had fading calluses on her hands. He recalled that she had worked for her aunt and uncle doing manual labor before being sent to join the household.
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She had straight dark hair that came to her shoulders, pale skin, and gray eyes. Archmund knew he would miss her terribly once he had to formally enter high society and she realized it was no longer appropriate for her to be sarcastic with him. But that was at least five years in the future.
As Mary whipped the eggs, Archmund drizzled in the oil. The mayonnaise came together as fast as he’d expected. It was a modest amount, but more than enough for ten sandwiches. He tasted it, and it was as rich and creamy as he’d remembered.
“Would you like a taste, Mary?”
“I’d rather not. Raw eggs.”
Oh, he was such an idiot. He’d been spoiled by the hygiene of his old world.
“There’s no need to worry about that,” said a booming voice from behind them. It was Willem Barst, an old friend and trusted servant of the Lord Granavale. They had been together for years — since the elder Granavale’s time in the Imperial Academy, in fact. Chef Bast had been trained in Imperial culinary traditions, and was, in fact, one of the few ostentatious luxuries retained by House Granavale.
“We run all the eggs through hygiene spells. Have ever since the start of the Plague,” Barst continued.
“I’m glad I won’t catch ill again,” Archmund said. “Chef Barst, what do you think?”
Barst swiped a finger through the concoction and tasted it.
“Ah, you’ve made mayonnaise! Where’d you’d learn about this?”
(He didn’t literally say the word mayonnaise, but it undeniably a proper noun. Upon hearing it, Archmund instantly understood that whatever name it was under, mayonnaise already existed.)
“Damn, this wasn’t just one of his fits of pique?” Mary said. “This mayonnaise stuff already exists?”
“It’s rarer, and not an obvious recipe,” said Barst.
“Is there any reason why?” Archmund asked.
Barst’s eyebrows knit together, and he pursed his lips in the way he always did when he was trying to hide something from Archmund.
“Young master, it’s made from raw eggs, which perturbs the common man, especially since the start of the Plague.”
“What if we used sanitation spells?”
Barst’s eyebrows tensed even further. The servants had a habit of doing this, going to great lengths to hide just how rich the Granavales were from Archmund. It was obvious now, but he still hadn’t figured out why they bothered.
“The average farmer doesn’t have energy to cast a sanitation spell every morning to clean a few eggs when they could borrow the town’s fire spell or some flint and steel once a month and cook the damn things,” Mary said.
“If it’s a matter of scale, we could build a manufactory. Crack a few hundred eggs into a basin and cast the sanitation spell on all of them at the same time. We could add oil to the basin while swirling it with a rotation spell.”
“You’d never find a noble willing to do magic in a manufactory.”
“Why does it have to be a noble?”
“Because commoners don’t have enough innate magic to cast complex spells. Only nobles and heroes do. You should know this by now.”
And an alarm went off in Archmund’s mind.
Magical capacity could be grown and increased. He was almost certain of it. He had been practicing with his Red Gem of Light every day, and each time he was able to charge it for longer and longer. It had gotten to the point where he would be watching it in the mornings to see how long it had stayed lit, because he had enough power to keep it lit through the night.
Something told him it would be a bad idea to claim, even if it wasn’t fully proven, that commoners could use magic as much as nobles if only they had the time and opportunity to practice.
That was the stuff of revolution, and it might lead to getting him killed.
“Say I did this myself,” Archmund said. “Ignoring all the social obligations and such. Is there any other reason it wouldn’t work?”
Barst told Archmund how much the eggs and oil cost. It was about half a month of his allowance, which even considering his youth, was significant.
Sighing, Archmund agreed to pay for the costs of the supplies. This world was just unfair.
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“He wasn’t in any position to refuse your offer to pay him off,” Mary said.
“I know.”
They walked in silence towards Archmund’s room.
“What didn’t he tell me?” Archmund asked.
“A whole lot.”
“Did he cheat me?”
Mary stopped walking. Archmund turned around. She was gazing through the window towards Granavale Town. “I don’t know. You gave him what I get in a month and a half of work. Two eggs is hard to get but not impossible. I couldn’t say how much the oil would be. I only ever had lard or butter.”
Archmund walked up besides her.
“I grew up with three siblings or cousins. My aunt and uncle only had enough for the one chicken. Before I started here, we’d only get an egg once a month — and that was for the four of us. My aunt and uncle would skip, or be out hawking their wares. When they came back we’d eat well for a few days or so, but then they’d have to be off again.”
Perhaps, Archmund reflected, he could’ve put a higher priority on understanding the harshness of this world’s poverty. Perhaps it could have avoided this conversation. Or perhaps this conversation was just what he needed.
“I worked for a year and a half here before I could save up enough for a second chicken. Now my siblings get two, maybe three eggs a month, though your generosity keeps me fed far better.”
“So for a factory where we cracked a few hundred eggs into a basis…”
She laughed, not meanly, but as if on the verge of tears. “Where would you get so many eggs? From all the poor workers who need their daily eggs to live? Even you couldn’t buy up that many chickens, surely. It’s silly, Arch. It’s… beneath you, young master.”
The real issue with mayonnaise in fantasy worlds wasn’t one of the ingenuity of the people, or for want of ingredients, or a lack of appetite for the condiment.
It was logistical.
If you wished to make mayonnaise en masse, you must’ve first invented factory farming.
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That evening, he wrote down a new task. A larger-scope, longer-term goal that would be necessary if he wanted true freedom.
Task #3: Grow the Granavale Holdings and fortune to a point where he literally didn’t have to do anything to maintain them, so he could do whatever he wanted.
Task #4: Revise Task #3 to be specific, once he understood realistic economic power in this world.
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Archmund’s Journal:
Year 0, Day 11:
Push-ups: 100 in 29 minutes
Magic: Light lasts for 2 hours
Mayonnaise won’t lead to freedom unless I introduce factory farms. Would that even be allowed? They might not care about animal welfare here but maybe there are elves or beast people somewhere on the continent who would take that as an excuse for a total war?
I think I should focus on magic. Something’s bothering me:
Servants can use Gems.
All magic comes from Gems.
Only nobles can use magic.
I believed that all three of these are true. They can’t be.
Maybe everyone can use Gems, but only nobles can “do magic” because “doing magic” is something else that transcends “using a Gem”. This is something I need to investigate to see if this is the path to true power (and freedom).
Maybe “noble blood” is what you need to “use” Gems, and servants have “noble blood”. I don’t like the implications of this... wait. We get most of our servants from the County. If all of them have noble blood, then so does everyone in the Empire.
Maybe everyone can use Gems, but only nobles get training, practice, and nutrition to actually “use” Gems to their full potential. Classic classism. I wouldn’t rule it out, but…
It’s testable.
Easily testable.
Mary can activate Gems. She’s reasonably well fed here. She’s not exhausted in the evenings.
I’ll ask her to train the way I do.