An Avatar Christmas – page 17
Not gonna lie, I had the idea of cooking Ginger-Grights first, and only afterwards realized how odd it was for Avatar to be baking anything when she can’t eat. There’s probably some deeper comedy to be mined there, like she’d have perfect theoretical knowledge of how to follow any recipe, but she’d never be able to taste it herself to see if she got it right.
And speaking of baking, how have I never once actually made Ginger-Grights in real life? I made a frickin’ Gright CAKE once, but no cookies?
Avatar does not need to taste it to see if it’s right – cooking, contrary to what some on the internet seem to believe, is not Art, it’s Chemistry. If you do the exact same thing with the exact same ingredients, you will get the exact same result. We normals need to taste it, because we’re not capable of duplicating with that precision – but miss repository-of-all-knowledge shouldn’t have a problem with it, she’s the only one that would not need to taste test anything. 100% chance anything Avatar makes will be far better than anything I could ever make, tasteable or not.
Reasonably, though, she does know exactly what they taste like: It’s zillions of years in the future, they surely have the ability to record their brain’s perception of taste of foods. Like photos and vids today, zillions of narcissists will post their taste recording experiences on Spacebook and Twitstar for others to experience. Whether anyone cares or not. Restaurants will offer a free 30 seconds of taste experience to entice customers in. You can post a recipe AND the experience of what it tastes like so you don’t have to try it to see if you’ll like it. Of course, the flaw here is that due to differing genetics, (contrary to what most foodies on the internet seem to believe) the exact same food literally tastes different to different people, and this is 1000x more so after a million more years of people hacking their taste bud genetics to make broccoli taste like ice cream to them. So, the point is, miss infinite-knowledge can “remember” the recorded memory of what the cookies tasted like to a million different people, that’s why she says …what they ACTUALY taste like… – meaning what they would taste like to HER. But it’s not like she doesn’t know what they taste like to others.
To nitpick, I don’t think it’s ever been established in-world that she can’t taste, just that she can’t eat. She’s fine if she spits it out and doesn’t consume any of it. But who would want to do that? That’s just tormenting yourself, especially if it’s delicious. And she might accidentally swallow a tiny bit, which would be bad. So she avoids tasting, both because its dangerous and because its tormenting. Not that Mad Scientists aren’t practical, but seems like if they sent her out to gather ALL knowledge, but no ability to taste, they’re missing a big chunk of knowledge there. (Maybe they considered downloading taste-impressions from the net as “good enough” because they didn’t care if she actually got enjoyment from it. jerks!)
The real question to be asked here is: why is anyone in the future cooking in the first place? Cooking already seems like a superfluous waste of time to me in the present. More so in the future, when machines will cook the food 100x better, 100x faster, and tuned directly to the genetic tastes of the eater. No way even the best human chef could compete. Although Avatar has a computer brain so she might be able to do it. Sure, you say, machines only dispense junk food crud. That’s just on the Cap’n’s ship – he initially bought some machines that did deluxe gourmet food along with the others, almost nobody ate them, they ran straight for the junk food ones like 99% of modern people, and since the deluxe machines were expensive and not helping the profit margin, they were replaced with more junk food machines. Give the people what they want, whether they want it or not! 😉
Also: Gingerbread men often look already pretty much like Gright already – just put the red dot on some store bought ones and You’re good! 😀