This post concludes the quest for a non-magical equivalent of the elvish lembas bread given to the nine companions in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring.
Legend has it that one “very thin cake” could keep one of the “tall Men of Minas Tirith” on his feet “for a day of long labour”… which, we concluded in Part 1, translates to 6,000 calories of delicious waybread. In Part 2, calorie calculations concluded that you can’t get more than about 2,000 calories into a large 1-cup serving of food… and you can only do that if you use pure lard.
Pure lard isn’t appetizing, while lembas was “baked a light brown on the outside, and inside was the colour of cream”... delicious enough that Gimli greedily gobbled (I'm really hitting the alliterations today) an entire cake by accident. In this post, I look at a few attempts to make the highest calorie edible lembas equivalent.
Legend has it that one “very thin cake” could keep one of the “tall Men of Minas Tirith” on his feet “for a day of long labour”… which, we concluded in Part 1, translates to 6,000 calories of delicious waybread. In Part 2, calorie calculations concluded that you can’t get more than about 2,000 calories into a large 1-cup serving of food… and you can only do that if you use pure lard.
Pure lard isn’t appetizing, while lembas was “baked a light brown on the outside, and inside was the colour of cream”... delicious enough that Gimli greedily gobbled (I'm really hitting the alliterations today) an entire cake by accident. In this post, I look at a few attempts to make the highest calorie edible lembas equivalent.
My wife is a baker of no small skill, so she agreed to my unusual request: invent a bread-related food item that is 1) about 1 cup per serving, 2) super full of calories, and 3) delicious (optional).
Ignoring the ‘peripheral’ taste and texture-related ingredients like sugar, baking powder, vanilla, yeast, and egg, baked goods have two ingredients that are important for our purposes: flour and fat. Flour gives structure and makes things technically ‘bread,’ while fat donates calories. Regular bread has very little fat, while pastries like biscuits, cookies, and pie crust have a lot:
Recipe Attempt 1:
My wife took inspiration for her first attempt from this lembas bread recipe from Amalia Miller (also found in Recipes from a Halfling’s Pantry by Amalia and Amy Young). The original recipe called for 2 cups flour, 1 cup butter, and ½ cup brown sugar… but since our goal is to prioritize calories over taste (and since butter—at a mere 7 calories per gram to lard’s 9 calories per gram—wastes a lot of volume on water content), my wife replaced the butter with lard, used a little less sugar, and threw in some toasted almonds (in spite of their paltry 6 calories per gram). She also halved the recipe to get closer to a single serving:
Ignoring the ‘peripheral’ taste and texture-related ingredients like sugar, baking powder, vanilla, yeast, and egg, baked goods have two ingredients that are important for our purposes: flour and fat. Flour gives structure and makes things technically ‘bread,’ while fat donates calories. Regular bread has very little fat, while pastries like biscuits, cookies, and pie crust have a lot:
- Typical biscuits: 2 cups flour, ½ cup butter (4:1 flour-to-fat ratio)
- Typical cookies: 2 cups flour, 2/3 cup butter (3:1 flour-to-fat ratio)
- Typical pie crust: 2 cups flour, 1 cup butter (2:1 flour-to-fat ratio)
Recipe Attempt 1:
My wife took inspiration for her first attempt from this lembas bread recipe from Amalia Miller (also found in Recipes from a Halfling’s Pantry by Amalia and Amy Young). The original recipe called for 2 cups flour, 1 cup butter, and ½ cup brown sugar… but since our goal is to prioritize calories over taste (and since butter—at a mere 7 calories per gram to lard’s 9 calories per gram—wastes a lot of volume on water content), my wife replaced the butter with lard, used a little less sugar, and threw in some toasted almonds (in spite of their paltry 6 calories per gram). She also halved the recipe to get closer to a single serving:
- Recipe: 1 cup flour, ½ cup lard, ¼ cup brown sugar, 1 tbsp honey, 2 tbsp chopped almonds
- Resulting size: 1-1/2 cups (a 6-inch circle 3/4 inch thick).
- Calories per 1-cup serving: 825 calories
Recipe Attempt 2:
The first recipe had a biscuit-like 4:1 flour-to-fat ratio, which begged the question: Why not make something more akin to the fattiest of all pastries (pie crust)? It took some convincing for my wife to turn off her “this isn’t going to taste good” instincts and make a big 1-cup lembas-shaped blob of extra-fatty pie crust (with a 3:2 flour-to-fat ratio by volume), but she obliged.
The first recipe had a biscuit-like 4:1 flour-to-fat ratio, which begged the question: Why not make something more akin to the fattiest of all pastries (pie crust)? It took some convincing for my wife to turn off her “this isn’t going to taste good” instincts and make a big 1-cup lembas-shaped blob of extra-fatty pie crust (with a 3:2 flour-to-fat ratio by volume), but she obliged.
- Recipe: 3/4 cups flour, ½ cup lard, ¼ cup ice water (plus ½ teaspoon of salt)
- Resulting size: 1 cup (a 6-inch circle ½ inch thick)
- Calories per 1-cup serving: 1266 calories
So there you have it: a tall man of Minas Tirith would need five of these for a full day’s travel, but I think they’re about the limit of what’s possible without elvish magic.
Have an idea for more calories, better taste, or the next Mechanical Fictioneering analysis? Leave a comment – I’d love to hear from you.
Have an idea for more calories, better taste, or the next Mechanical Fictioneering analysis? Leave a comment – I’d love to hear from you.