Two reasons, actually.

  1. It’s not their preferred preparation. All the replicated food is based on a pattern from an original recipe. It’s not adding flair or anything, it’s literally a copy of a dish made who knows how long ago. And that’s where the next reason comes from:

  2. Imagine eating some spicy pepper dish from, like, the 1940’s vs the same dish made today with spicer peppers. It wouldn’t be as spicy eating something that wasn’t, at the time, really selectively bred to be more spicy. If the recipe for the replicator is, like, hundreds of years old it would probably not be as potent as the same dish made with real ingredients.

I can imagine that the characters that have expressed disdain for replicated food probably get hit by both of these. It’s not the way they would preferred it to be made, and it’s also like eating vegetable jello salad in 2024.

  • Infynis@midwest.socialEnglish
    11·
    12 days ago

    There could be hundreds of versions of each individual dish.

    Not just could be. We know there are. In the first episode or two episode of Voyager, Tom tries to order tomato soup from the replicator, and it asks him a ton of questions because there are like a hundred different versions of tomato soup, including Bolian style, meaning not only are recipes kept modern, they even include alien takes on other species’ meals! I wonder if Klingon replicators can make Rhaktajino DS9 style