Fundamental Questions for Worldbuilding Cuisine in Sci-Fi
- Casey Hudson
- Jul 14
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 27
Food is foundational to culture. It’s how we express emotion. How we take care of ourselves. How we show what we can’t say. And it’s in the background of every story… even the science fiction ones.
These are the essentials for creating a realistic and unique sci-fi cuisine.
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Envisioning Foundational Foods when Worldbuilding Cuisine
The baseline for most cuisine is who’s eating the food and where they live.
Let’s look at human diets for a second. Humans, as a species, are not actually great at digesting raw meat. Not as great as, say, leopards. Our digestive systems can’t access as many of the nutrients, and we’re susceptible to food-borne illness.
Even amongst humans, there are differences in digestion abilities. Some people have difficulty digesting beans. Onions. Dairy.
Food allergies, too, are pretty common. So worldbuilding cuisine requires that you first look at what your sci-fi species is capable of eating.
The next step is to consider location.
Looking again at Earthly behavior: Cuisine from a coastal area is likely to be seafood forward. But desert cuisine may include agave syrup or tequila.
Yeah, your sci-fi world may have characters who can access foods not native to an area. But remember, there was a time… before. A time when that culture didn’t trade with other planets. Didn’t trade with other cultures. Couldn’t eat anything beyond what they could farm or hunt themselves. And that’s the time when your sci-fi cultures would have created their old world recipes. The recipes that are the basis for modern-day cuisine.
So begin with that foundation.
Then, start breaking this idea down by food types. Take meat, for instance. Are there any animals your sci-fi culture considers appropriate for eating (as opposed to furry friends or sacred species)? Are they land-based? Flying lifeforms? Water animals? Have you considered insects, fish, or any mythical lifeforms? And to get from “animal” to “meat” how are they acquired? …Are they farmed? Hunted? Scavenged?
You don’t have to record every detail, but the answers to these questions are the basis of your sci-fi food’s uniqueness.
Take Dudahn, from my Drifting Amalgams universe.
Dudahn’s parents are two different species. One batlike. One crowlike.
Her tadaribrae heritage means she can easily digest flying insects. Moths, flying ants, beetles, and mayflies are the baseline for this species.
And remembering that she's also corvucor’x, I’ve added small rodents, seeds, nuts, and berries to her baseline.
Altogether, Dudahn is omnivorous due to her hybridized digestive system.
She has easy access to the commercialized insect farms of her tadaribrae kin. And her corvucor’x family shares farmed produce and ranched rodents from their planet.
The cuisine she enjoys includes a mix of all these foods, which she can both digest and procure.
Now that we know what Dudahn can eat... What about what she wants to eat?
Creating Suitable Flavors when Worldbuilding Cuisine
Flavor profiles add character when worldbuilding cuisine. This is true within the worldbuilding experience itself. But it can also underlie deeper meaning inside a narrative.
Let’s look again at Dudahn, but this time we’ll explore how flavor illuminates her character within a scene:
Dudahn casually flew to her food replicator and requested fancy food.
When the replicator beeped, she pulled out the first item before keying in a new round of recipe specifications.
The replicator accepted the order and hummed in preparation.
The inspector scanned the assortment of readied food baskets before asking, “No boiled cricket?”
“Oh.” Dudahn looked at the abundance of seasoned insects and spiced fruits and realized she could have planned a simpler meal.
This is from an early draft I wrote …before layering in significant worldbuilding elements.
The inspector's request for “boiled cricket,” is meant to highlight the two characters’ fundamental differences. Though Dudahn shares a basic love of insects with her tadaribrae dinner guest, her omnivorous diet doesn’t appeal to the inspector’s more traditional sensibilities.
Notice, too, that the food mentions are so general they almost fade into the background:
“Fancy food.”
“The first item.”
“Recipe specifications.”
Worldbuilding cuisine with specific flavor elements will allow me to be more specific and elevate this scene to something more meaningful.
So how would I worldbuild cuisine to enrich this scene?
…let’s reflect on evolution for a moment.
The flavors that species can taste are often related to survival. An advanced sense of bitterness may mean a heightened ability to identify poisons. Being attuned to variances in sweetness may help fruit eaters detect edibility. So think about how your sci-fi environment helped shape the species.
To simplify the process, it’s easiest to think in terms of some basic “flavor factors”. Humans, for example, perceive sour, bitter, savory. Floral, sweet, earthy. Think of any flavor you can put a name to. And if you can tie those flavors to something deeper about your sci-fi species, you have a viable basis for flavors they enjoy.
You can complete this exercise even if your species can’t taste in the same way humans perceive flavor. Consider worldbuilding flavor factors around other attributes.
Perhaps your sci-fi species consumes metal. so they “taste” differences in the level of their food’s magnetism. Or, if the sun is a primary source of nutrients, they can differentiate between red and yellow or UV levels. Whatever makes sense for the baseline foods you’ve established is worth exploring.
And, just like the baseline foods, you’ll want to break these ideas down; differentiate which foods taste like what.
For the staples: What flavors are common to the foods used as main ingredients? Which of these flavors is appealing? Consider sweet, sour, bitter, savory, and salty. And if you’re exploring something other than human-standard flavors, identify those factors.
Let’s examine Dudahn’s preferences:
Dudahn’s corvucor’x ancestors lived on a planet where several edible and inedible berries looked very similar. So they developed a sharpened sense of sweetness. On her modern-day palette, this carryover has manifested as a love for several similar but distinct fruits and nectars. She enjoys cuisine infused with these sweet, fruity notes.
Also, she, rather uncommonly, enjoys citrusy insects—especially in her desserts. Having spent much time in a region where ants were the only available protein source, she developed a love for this insect’s acidic taste …and a fondness for the ant-topped desserts found in that region.
These preferences represent a diversity of flavors her dinner guest is uncomfortable with.
So let’s look at that scene again:
Dudahn casually flew to her food replicator and requested roasted crickets in a simmering pomegranate sauce
When the replicator beeped, she pulled out the tangy stew before keying in a new round of recipe specifications.
Fried beetle poppers finished with a citrusy ant powder. And currant juice.
The replicator accepted the order and hummed in preparation.
The inspector scanned the assortment of readied food baskets before asking, “No boiled cricket?”
“Oh.” Dudahn looked at the abundance of seasoned insects and spiced fruits and realized she could have planned a simpler meal.
Still a rough draft, this scene does a much better job of highlighting Dudahn’s uniqueness compared to the inspector’s traditional food preferences.
Advanced Topics for Worldbuilding Cuisine in Sci-Fi
While baseline foods and flavors can get you pretty far when worldbuilding cuisine, you can level up your fictional recipes by, next, focusing on preparation.
This aspect is all about presentation, texture, health and safety, and preservation of food.
Raw or baked? Crunchy or chewy? Washed or boiled? Canned or frozen?
These decisions lead to a more holistic cuisine within a sci-fi world. And they’re ones you’ll definitely want to consider if food is at the forefront of your narrative.
For an added level of customization, you’ll need to envision several recipes and even think about what special occasions merit the consumption of certain foods.
All of that is a bit advanced for a talk on the essentials, though.
If you want to get started on worldbuilding cuisine within these subtopics, I have created a 20-question worldbuilding worksheet that’s live on my Patreon. So head over to patreon.com/worldworkings to check it out.
…Or, you can just wait until I cover the rest of this topic in a future talk.
Until next time, stay inspired.
