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The trade eats well, by its own standards, and poorly, by everyone else’s. A working ship’s galley produces, in any given crossing, meals that are filling, portable, resistant to spoilage, and the same as the previous meal in most respects. This is not a complaint — most working sailors prefer it this way — but it is a fact, and it explains both the trade’s strong opinions about food and the trade’s notable enthusiasm for the first land-meal after any crossing of length.
What the galley produces
A working ship’s galley, on a standard reach-vessel, has two working states: the cooking-fire is lit (in port, in calm upper-mist, on long evenings) and the cooking-fire is not lit (in salt-broth weather, on short crossings, when the captain has decided the lift is delicate enough that an open flame is unwise). The galley produces, in roughly equal measure, hot food and cold food, and the cold food is, in working sailor’s estimation, the food that pays the bills.
The cold-food canon, in working consensus:
- Hardtack, in many regional variations. Pike’s Reach hardtack is denser than Copper Ring hardtack; Anvilbound hardtack is larger and contains more grain. All hardtack is, by working description, not bread. It is what bread becomes when bread has to last
- Pickled fish, in brine, in vinegar, in oil — often whatever the cluster’s preserving-tradition supports. Pike’s Reach pickles in a particular salt-and-herb brine that the village has refined over generations and refuses to publish. Copper Ring pickles in vinegar and the small cluster of spices the brasswright trade has access to. Veiled-folk villages pickle in salt and very little else
- Dried meats — pork in the Copper Ring, fish in the Quiet Reach, mountain goat in Ironvale. Always dried with salt; never smoked aboard ship (the smoke is impractical in a moving galley)
- Hard cheeses, when available. Anvilbound cheeses are the most prized on long crossings. The trade pays well for them
- Fresh fruit — only at the first days of a crossing; rarer in later weeks. The trade keeps no illusions about fresh produce on a long crossing
The hot-food canon, when the cooking-fire can be lit:
- Salt-broth — the literal stew, named for the weather condition, in which most ships base their hot meals. A working galley keeps a stock-pot going whenever conditions permit; new ingredients are added as available; the broth is essentially continuous across a working crossing. A captain who has refused to keep the stock-pot at all has, by working trade-judgement, committed minor philosophical wrongdoing
- Sailor’s-pudding — a dense baked bread-and-fish loaf, made on ships with proper galleys. The version is regional. The Pike’s Reach version uses smoked herring; the Copper Ring version uses spiced pork; the Anvilbound version uses dried mountain-goat and a quantity of black pepper most other clusters consider excessive
- Watch-cake — a small dense biscuit, sweetened with whatever honey or dried-fruit the galley has, distributed to the night-watch on every crossing. The watch-cake is the only meal a working captain personally distributes in most reach-trades. The convention is older than most working vessels. No one knows precisely why
Cluster cuisines
The home-cluster’s cuisine, encountered on land, is what the trade eats for fun. The brief survey:
- Quiet Reach: fish-stew, smoked herring, brown bread, butter when available, a mild fish-broth that improves over a winter. The cuisine is plain by reach-standards. The cluster prefers it this way and finds the alternative theatrical
- Copper Ring: spiced stews, brass-pot cuisine (the pot matters; the pot’s previous decade of use matters), traders’ sweet-rolls, the Reach’s most varied selection of imported spices, and the small brass-glazed pastries the brasswright apprenticeship has elevated to local art
- Ironvale and the Anvilbound: hearty bread, pickled root-vegetables, dwarven cheese, mountain-goat in many preparations, and a small range of fermented drinks the rest of the Reach drinks with caution. The Anvilbound regard their cuisine as the most important contribution to civilization. The rest of the Reach has, courteously, not contradicted them
- Veiled-folk: sparse, root-and-fish, simple. The cuisine reflects the cluster’s geography. The Veiled-folk are good at preserving things and have made a kind of art of making little feel like enough
Daily traditions
Most working ships and most reach-households observe a small set of daily food-traditions, not all of which the temple has formally adopted (see Vessen of the Hearth):
- The first bite touches the table — given to Vessen
- The first loaf goes to the guest — including, on a working ship, the youngest greenhand if no guest is present. The greenhand is, in trade-judgement, the household’s stand-in
- Bread is on the table at every meal — even when the rest of the meal is small. A meal without bread is, in old reach- tradition, not a meal but a snack, regardless of how many courses follow
- The table is wiped down before clearing — not after. The wiping is the meal’s quiet conclusion. Most working ships have a small soft cloth kept in the galley for this single purpose
The first landfall meal
The trade has its working understanding that the first land-meal after a crossing of length is what the trade is in the trade for. The meal is not always grand. The meal is fresh. Vegetables that have not been pickled. Bread baked the same morning. Fish that did not have to be preserved. A small drink that is not the ship’s allocation. The trade-tradition is to eat this meal slowly and without haste, in a port-tavern or in the home-isle’s kitchen, and to allow the meal to take as long as it takes. Most working captains will, by long practice, hold the rest of the day’s business until the meal is finished.
“My galley produces seven distinct dishes across a long crossing. Six of them are variations of the same broth. The seventh is the watch-cake. I have served on three working ships across thirty years, and I have, at the captain’s table on each of them, been thanked at least once a season. The trade does not eat well. The trade eats faithfully. There is a difference.”
— Master Cook Halen of the Tradewell, retired, 408 AU