Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 4.8 - Chapter 5

Ahrensbach’s Fish Cuisine

The feast celebrating spring marked the end of winter socializing. Nobles began returning to their own provinces, while those living in the Noble’s Quarter started working as normal. As for me, my time at the dinner table became a bit more animated, since Melchior was now eating with us.

“Am I right to assume you’ll be going back to the temple soon, as you usually do, Rozemyne?” Sylvester asked with narrowed eyes.

“No, I don’t intend to return for a little while longer,” I replied. He would have been right under normal circumstances, but not this year. He had yet to deliver on his most important promise.

“How come? Has something happened?”

Really? That’s his response? I see he’s forgotten his sacred vow.

I pursed my lips. “Sylvester, were you not going to teach my chefs how to cook fish? I have been waiting for this ever since returning from the Royal Academy.” By this point, so many days had passed that I was about to be sent back to the temple whether I wanted to go there or not. It was a disaster.

Sylvester clapped his hands together in a show of apparent realization. “Right, right. Just ask Ferdinand to bring the ingredients over. Once the chefs have them, I’ll tell them to make some traditional Ahrensbach recipes.”

“Thank you,” I replied. I was wearing a composed and elegant smile, but underneath the table, my fists were clenched in victory.

Yippee! I can finally eat fish! Finally, finally, finally!

And this wasn’t going to be the gross, muddy fish from Ehrenfest’s dirty rivers either; this was proper fish from Ahrensbach’s ocean. How many years had passed since I was afforded such a grand opportunity? I couldn’t help but get excited, and as I thanked Aurelia for bringing something so tasty from Ahrensbach to begin with, I suddenly realized something.

“Sylvester, the fish that Ferdinand is storing came from Aurelia, who brought it to Ehrenfest so that she could enjoy the flavors of her home,” I said. “I wish to share the results with her as well, so can I have permission to invite her for a meal on the day it is made?”

“Hm...” Sylvester fell into thought for a bit, then looked at Karstedt, who was standing behind him. “If we have Aurelia in attendance, then we’ll need to bring more guards and decide whether to invite Lamprecht and the rest of your estate... but I don’t have a problem with the invitation itself.”

That was the answer I wanted to hear, but as I celebrated, Florencia called out to me in a gentle voice. “Rozemyne, Aurelia may be nostalgic for the food of her home, but we do not know if she will be fit to come. Be certain to check with Lamprecht or Elvira before inviting her.”

Florencia had taken extra care to avoid outright saying that Aurelia was pregnant. Indeed, if Aurelia was suffering from morning sickness or was starting to show, she wouldn’t be able to come to the castle to eat even if she wanted to. And if she was feeling unwell, there was a chance that she wouldn’t even be able to taste the food. She was also uncomfortable being around a lot of people, and if she received a formal invitation from me, she would more or less be forced to attend.

Though I really do want to give her the chance to enjoy these traditional Ahrensbach meals...

“Wilfried, can I borrow Lamprecht for a bit?” I asked on our way back to our rooms after dinner. “I wish to speak with him about Aurelia.”

“Sure.”

Having been granted time to talk to Lamprecht, I asked him to accompany me to the room in the main building closest to the northern building. He was joining me as family rather than in an official capacity, which meant I still needed Cornelius with me as a guard, but he had a relaxed expression as well.

“Lamprecht, how is Aurelia?” I asked when we arrived. “Will she be able to join us in the castle for Ahrensbach cooking?”

“Mm, I don’t know...” he muttered, his arms crossed in thought. “I think she’d struggle as she is now. She’s having a hard time eating at the moment, so I’d rather you not send an invitation. If you do, we’ll have no choice but to attend.”

It seemed that Aurelia was having a rather miserable time with her pregnancy—she was too sick to move and spent her days vomiting and sleeping. Mom had been able to move while pregnant, but her health had sometimes taken a turn for the worse, and she had felt sick all the time.

“Not to mention,” Lamprecht continued, “if she eats at the castle, she’ll need to remove her veil.”

Oh, right. That would be an issue...

“I realize that I’ve never seen her face before,” I said. “Lamprecht, have you seen her without her veil on?”

Lamprecht blinked in surprise, then chuckled. “Of course I have. I mean, she almost never wears it while she’s in her room. She just doesn’t want to invite any misunderstandings that would damage relations between Ehrenfest and Ahrensbach. She didn’t wear a veil during her time at the Royal Academy either, you know.”

I was curious as to how Lamprecht and Aurelia had grown close when she was always wearing a veil, but as it turned out, she hadn’t actually worn one in the Royal Academy. That made sense; a face covering would have impacted her performance in her apprentice knight classes.

“I think Aurelia will continue to wear her veil in Ehrenfest until things with Ahrensbach have been patched up,” Lamprecht said. “She’s a fairly timid girl.”

“I somewhat sensed that while watching her socialize,” I replied. “She stuck close behind Mother at all times.”

After some thought, I decided to use a time-stopping magic tool to bring her hot, freshly made food. Aurelia had used the magic tool to begin with so that she could enjoy Ahrensbach cuisine whenever she wanted, so I was more or less restoring things to how they had been originally.

“So, in short, after we’ve cooked the traditional Ahrensbach meals, I want you to bring the time-stopping magic tool for Aurelia,” I said.

Lamprecht patted me on the head, a broad smile on his lips. “Thanks for putting so much thought into all this, Rozemyne. I’m sure Aurelia will really appreciate it.”

“But that means I won’t get invited either...” Cornelius grumbled as he prodded my cheek, sad to be missing out on Ahrensbach cooking. If we were taking the food to Aurelia instead of asking her to dinner, that meant we wouldn’t need to invite the whole Karstedt estate.

Upon returning to my room, I sent an ordonnanz to Ferdinand with a simple message: “Bring the fish when you can. It’s time to learn Ahrensbach cuisine.” He replied with a curt “Understood,” and with this confirmation, I was able to sleep peacefully that night.

It was during breakfast the very next morning that Rihyarda informed me the fish had arrived at the castle. I sent an ordonnanz to Ferdinand, noting that he had acted much faster than I expected and asking whether he was looking forward to the fish as well, but his response immediately laid those thoughts to rest.

“I am not particularly looking forward to it. The tool simply requires a considerable amount of mana, so I would rather stop supplying it. I would also like you to return to the temple as soon as possible.”

He was clearly trying to refute the idea, but he also noted that he was going to be spending the entire day working at the castle, so there was no mistaking his enthusiasm for the food.

Ferdinand came to the knight training grounds later that day, at the same time as I was doing my light exercises, which gave me the perfect opportunity to probe him for information. “So, what fish did Aurelia bring to Ehrenfest?” I asked. “Please show them to me.”

“Give it up. Norbert has already had them taken to the kitchen. You will not see them until dinner tonight.”

Naturally, a high-status rich girl such as myself couldn’t just go wandering into the kitchen. My only choice was to wait until dinnertime, which was something of a disappointing realization. Still, today was the day that Hugo and Ella were going to learn from the court chefs to prepare the ingredients so that they could make traditional Ahrensbach meals for Aurelia. They wouldn’t be cooking anything to suit my personal tastes.

Patience, Rozemyne. Patience.

“Still, Ferdinand, it’s rare to see you out here training with the knights rather than helping Sylvester with his work,” I remarked. “Is there a reason for that?”

He paused for a moment and then said, “I simply wished for a change of pace.” I wasn’t sure I believed him, though; he seemed to be taking this training very seriously. Bonifatius and Eckhart were eagerly serving as his partners, and Angelica was watching on with an expression of pure greed, wanting nothing more than to join in herself.

“I’m going to be doing my usual exercises with Damuel,” I informed Angelica, “so you are welcome to join Ferdinand and the others. I appreciate that this must be a rare opportunity.”

“Oh, Lady Rozemyne, I thank you ever so much!” Angelica exclaimed with a beaming smile. She sprinted over to her fellow knights like the wind, while I continued my usual cycle of doing some light exercises and resting.

I contacted the kitchen after doing my exercises, asking them to put aside some of the ingredients for me to bring back to the temple, then started writing down more recipes I remembered. It was probably best for us to go with a Western dish this time; something like a fish marinade, carpaccio, or meunière, or something soaked in oil and cooked in herbs. There were also broths and stews like acqua pazza or bouillabaisse... Frittered and fried were good too, as was fish gratin. I wasn’t sure whether the fish we had could be eaten raw, so some of the recipes I was considering were probably off the table, but my heart raced just thinking about all the tasty culinary avenues we could venture down.

But what I want to eat most is simple, salt-grilled fish. The kind where you cut a cross shape into it, throw on some salt, and then grill it plain.

The salt would make white bumps on the fish, and the scorch marks would make it crisp. Peeling the skin off with chopsticks would result in puffs of steam and a delicious aroma, and some sour citrus juice on top was nothing short of complete bliss. The only thing it needed to be perfect was some freshly cooked white rice or dry Japanese sake.

Unfortunately, I’m too young to drink in this world. How I miss having the body of a twenty-two-year-old...

Still, the very thought of all the fish dishes from my Urano days made me hungry. If we could get some soy sauce, there was also the option of making a Japanese stew, but there was nothing here that would satisfy that craving. Perhaps there was a fish sauce of some kind in Ahrensbach that we could use, but that simply wouldn’t make for a good enough substitute. As they say, Flutrane and Heilschmerz heal in their own ways.

Before I knew it, dinnertime had arrived. I was positively brimming with excitement as I came out of my room and started toward the dining hall with my siblings.

“Today’s dinner is traditional Ahrensbach cooking, using ingredients that Aurelia brought to Ehrenfest,” I said. “This is going to be my first time trying it.”

“Ahrensbach cooking, huh?” Wilfried replied, looking somewhat wistful. “We used to eat that sometimes. Grandmother loved it.” He had apparently been raised on a regular diet of Ahrensbach cooking while in Veronica’s care. I asked what the food was like, so eager that I was practically leaning out the window of my Pandabus.

“Rozemyne, do you love new sweets and recipes?” Melchior asked, his eyes wide with surprise.

Charlotte giggled. “Rozemyne introduced so many trends precisely because she wishes to eat all the sweets and dishes she enjoys. Perhaps she will start another one after eating tonight’s dinner.”

“Well, I can’t wait to try this food myself.”

Back when the ban on socializing with Ahrensbach nobles had come into place, importing Ahrensbach ingredients into Ehrenfest had become significantly harder. It certainly hadn’t helped that Veronica was detained, and there was no one else to order traditional Ahrensbach cooking. Melchior had no memory of eating Ahrensbach food, while Charlotte just barely remembered having it on a few occasions.

“This is zanbelsuppe—fish soup with herbs and pomes,” said one of Sylvester’s attendants.

After our appetizers, we were served what looked a lot like bouillabaisse. Its appearance wasn’t entirely the same—it was yellow instead of red, owing to the pomes—but I expected that it would taste quite similar.

I dipped my spoon into the soup and eagerly brought the liquid to my lips. I drank it down greedily... then set down my cutlery and slumped over in disappointment.

It’s been so long since the last time I tasted this cursed dish. It’s Yurgenschmidt’s traditional soup: flavorless water. What a disappointment!

It seemed that the chefs had used the traditional Yurgenschmidt soup-making method of allowing the ingredients to stew until they were essentially mush, then throwing out all of the delicious broth and the amazing fishy flavor it contained. Instead, what we had was practically insipid; it was water with some shredded-up boiled fish floating in it. The fabled zanbelsuppe was awful, and the fact that my expectations had been so high made it all the more painful.

I can’t believe all of the delicious flavor has been watered down into nothingness. Come back, flavor! Come baaack!

The fish that Aurelia had brought with her were exceedingly rare in Ehrenfest, and they had been wasted on this. I could have died then and there—and my ghost would have haunted the chefs who had produced this atrocity.

“Eh... Is this really what it’s meant to taste like?” Sylvester murmured under his breath.

“Normal soup definitely tastes better,” Wilfried said in agreement. Everyone else sitting around the table looked a bit disappointed as well; they had become so accustomed to my dishes packed with flavor that this bland water didn’t satisfy them anymore.

As we were bemoaning the disappointing nature of our soup, another dish was brought in. “This is fikken,” Sylvester’s attendant explained.

As far as I could tell, it was white fish meunière with a distinctly buttery aroma. My stomach growled in anticipation, but I was reluctant to get my hopes up; perhaps this had been rendered just as flavorless as the zanbelsuppe. I nervously stabbed my knife into the dish before me and brought a bite to my mouth.

“I taste... fish,” I said, almost taken aback. The skin was crispy and properly coated in butter, and the addition of some rigar gave it a pleasant garlicky aftertaste. The fish itself practically fell apart in my mouth, having seemingly not been overcooked. All of these wondrous sensations had come from but a single bite, and it was so nostalgic that I wanted to shed tears of absolute joy.

This is actual fish from the sea... Not some weird, muddy alternative, but the real deal, like I was hoping for.

I savored each bite, allowing the flavor of the rare fish to dance on my tongue. It was fairly standard meunière that had clearly been seasoned and dredged in flour before being panfried in butter, and while the rigar was a little unique, it still tasted impressively similar to what I was used to from my Urano days. Back then, I probably would have described the taste as fairly average, but in this world, that “average” was what I valued more than anything. Unlike the cursed soup, it was delicious. It actually tasted like proper fish.

Aah, fish! It’s been so long! Thank you, Aurelia! You are my Verfuhremeer—my Goddess of Oceans!

I finished off my fikken, almost moved to tears. It was tasty, as one would expect meunière to be... but I still found myself craving salted fish.

“I appreciate the thin slices,” I said. “Could this fish be salted and grilled, then served with some citrus juice squeezed on top?”

“As you wish.”

I waited, excited, only to be served lemon-flavored meunière for some reason. They had added salt, as requested, and the buttery taste was mostly replaced with the sourness of the citrus juice. This meunière was a lot more refreshing than the one that was previously served, but it wasn’t what I had asked for. I wanted simple, salted fish.

Of course, I couldn’t complain about the court chefs here and now; one wrong move on my part would inevitably lead to them being fired. I was to blame for the confusion more than anyone—my instructions evidently hadn’t been clear enough, and as they were passed from person to person like a game of telephone before they reached the chefs, I needed to speak precisely enough that the specifics of my request would remain intact.

Sigh. I wanted to eat salted fish.

I wasn’t being ungrateful, by any means; I was still glad to have been afforded the chance to eat fish after such a long time. I was also wearing a genuine smile, in stark contrast to Ferdinand, whose dazzling expression was entirely fake. It was the smile he gave whenever he was extremely disgusted or otherwise dissatisfied. Clearly, he was thinking that the unimpressive flavor hadn’t been worth all the time and mana he had spent maintaining the time-stopping magic tool.

“There are still some ingredients left over, are there not?” I asked Lieseleta. “Tell my chefs to put them back in the time-stopping magic tool.”

“Rozemyne, why would you make such a request?” Ferdinand asked, his smile even more saccharine than before. I could tell just how much he wanted to yell at me for giving him more work to do as the mana supplier, and it seemed that I wasn’t the only one; Wilfried and Charlotte were glancing nervously between him and me.

“I intend to experiment with cooking fish more at the temple,” I replied, aware that I was guaranteed more freedom there than here in the castle. It was also easier to direct the chefs there. It seemed that Ferdinand wasn’t satisfied with this answer, however, so I continued. “You can make a delicious soup using fish if you properly handle the broth. I wish from the bottom of my heart to improve the zanbelsuppe we had today.”

I wasn’t going to set my standards too high and expect something on the level of soupe de poisson; acqua pazza or bouillabaisse would do. My main priority was making something that actually tasted good.

“Books, sweets, cuisine... You truly are ravenous when it comes to the things you want,” Ferdinand said with a look of exasperation. He was the last person I wanted to hear that from, considering what he was like when it came to delicious consommé and researching magic tools. His fake smile had vanished, though, so I could conclude that he was interested in my proposition.

Despite his silent disapproval, Ferdinand hadn’t actually forbidden me from taking the remaining ingredients back to the temple. I decided to ask Lieseleta to ensure that something else was packed alongside the prepared fish fillet.

“Do remind them to pack the bones and heads as well.”

“Did you say the bones and heads?” Lieseleta asked curiously. “What would you need those for?”

I glanced over at Ferdinand, who was once again wearing his false smile, then back at Lieseleta. “As one uses chicken bones to make chicken broth, they are essential for making fish broth. If you phrase it like that, I am certain the chefs will understand which parts are important.”

“Very well,” Lieseleta replied, then headed for the kitchen without making a sound. As I watched her go, I steeled my resolve to eat some very delicious fish.

Incidentally, while we had found the zanbelsuppe to be terrible, Aurelia had been starved for the Ahrensbach food she was so familiar with and rejoiced over the opportunity to eat it. She hadn’t been able to eat the fikken no matter how good it was, however, so perhaps completely tasteless food was actually more agreeable to her at the moment.