My To-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours

Pressed bean curds are a common item in many Eliéran cuisines, in recipes both savory and sweet. I refer to them using this long description since, despite being identical in many ways and produced from the same small group of plants, they are one of the very few foodstuffs to possess two names in Eldraeic: Kanatai-influenced cultures refer to them as sunmí, while Ochale-influenced cultures refer to them as rosmí.

While most differences in development between cultures on Upperside and Underside have long since been reconciled, and singular or adequately different terminology adopted, the chefs of Kanatai and Ochale were determined to insist upon the utter, fundamental, and obvious differences between sunmí and rosmí, something which the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology reluctantly allowed into the language after the argument on the point was deemed likely to claim the lives of both nations' delegations.

I, however, as a native of Palar, have tasted all forty-eight standard preparations of pressed bean curds in each style, be they salt-, acid-, or enzyme-curdled, and in the absence of any difference detectable to my tongue, declare that if one does not possess whatever special training enables the chefs of both nations to detect this elusive quality one may feel free to treat them alike.

As I shall now do in the forthcoming chapter.

- "If It's Food, We Can Cook It", a recipe collection by Líse Cassel of Palar