In WaT, Dalinar and Nohadon have a conversation about how the bread Nohadon makes is better with butter than with curry. Dalinar recognizes butter as something used for cooking but had never realized it tasted good on bread.
But... Where does butter come from on Roshar? They don't have cows or (I think) goats. The Shin have sheep but they don't seem to exist East of Shinovar. The biggest non-human mammals we tend to see are minks, and we know that even dogs couldn't survive Roshar (and dogs can adapt to different environments almost as well as humans).
Is there some Rosharan crustacean that produces milk? What's going on here?
There are several references to pigs or swine. I imagine you could make sow butter
They reference sows milk a few times.
Navani mentions sow's milk when discussing emulsifiers with Raboniel.
I know some people thought the fantasy science parts of Rhythm of War dragged, but personally I loved scenes like that. Raboniel knows so much, but she admits she's stuck in ancient ways of thinking and doesn't know which axioms to question. And it fits into the plot so naturally, as they work together to make Warlight.
The Raboniel/Navani stuff is my favorite arc in the whole series
I loved Raboniel and was genuinely sad to see her go.
Even understanding that she went in a perfect way for her and that elsewise Raize would've fucked with her.
I agree. She had a satisfying arc, but I wish I could see her react to new developments.
Saying "I didn't like the most interesting parts of RoW" is a clear indicator of someone being a lowly Dark Eye.
That's not very fair. Some people don't find fictional science interesting and there's nothing wrong with that. Some people think hard magic systems take the magic out of the story and they read Sanderson in spite of that.
It's a thematic joke about perceived intelligence, clutch your pearls a little less tightly and some blood may flow.
Ah yes a racism joke. So funny.
Nah, it just wasn't that funny. It's okay, even the best bomb sometimes, gancho. Keep your chin up.
rough ride.
Correct, also the source of their leather goods like horse tack and armor, and the main meat consumed when it's not crustaceans. I think Sebarial was mentioned to have pig farms near the warcamps.
for leather mostly, but the meat for lighteyes no doubt. They have some chull farm out there as well for meat gemstones.
“I have nipples, Renarin. Can you milk me?”
"If you take these hormones I had aunt Jasnah soulcast for us, yes."
Oh no, Tumblr is leaking again!
sorry, this isn't r/cremposting but
Milkform
It would be very hard to make. I remember a thread from a pig farmer a few months back where they said that sows' teats don't lend themselves to milking at all because of their shape, and the resulting milk isn't really worth harvesting let alone turning into cheese or butter.
Pigs not bred for milk are not worth harvesting when you have cows and goats who have been. Remove the classic dairy animals and breed the pigs for 7,000 years and instead you have some decent milk sows.
Plus, who knows what pigs/sows of Roshar actually look like. It might be some crab abomination like hounds
They are almost certainly descendants of actual pigs brought over from Ashyn. However, given that they've been subject to different selective breeding choices over the course of 7000 Rosharan years, they will almost certainly have several notable differences from Earth pigs in the same way that cattle are different than the wild aurochs that we domesticated.
They also have horses.
Thank you Terry Pratchett and Nation for that image...
It's shin bread. I'm sure it's also shin butter .
Also it's not that dogs couldn't adapt. There just weren't enough surviving dogs to make a breeding population
The Stormfather was really dejected about the doggocalypse, too, which I found hilarious.
In hindsight, it's kind of pathetic that with three Shards around nobody made an effort to recreate dogs.
Odium: I have introduced dogs back to Roshar. Behold the CHIHUAHUA! Wait no Stormfather don't blow my babies away.
Honor: I tried to bring golden retrievers back but all I did was make Adolin and task failed successfully.
Cultivation: axehounds are dragon dogs.
Well there were efforts to recreate dogs. That's what Axehounds are.
Humans did that though. I meant the Shards. For example, we know Tanavast missed dogs.
I'll chalk up Tanavast's failure to keep dogs around as yet another token of his utter incompetence.
Nobody convinced and/or tricked him into making a promise to keep dogs around and apparently he couldn't do anything his Shard wasn't strong arming him into.
[removed]
Bro got the tying/binding shard for ten thousand years but was too uptight to try anything.
Unless stated differently, Rosharans created axehounds the way we created dogs. They domesticated something akin to a wolf to create the axehound, just like how we did so with dogs.
The final step on that evolution line requires humans to domesticate. So really it seems like the shards did create what they could of dogs, a wolf analog.
Maybe Retribution's intent will be to create dogs to avenge the dead dogs of Ashyn/Roshar
Must not have been a lot of dogs. There should only have needed a few hundred dogs given how versatile they are genetically. They arent nearly as bottlenecked as humans are. Although Cosmere humans may not have hit the same genetic issues as Earth humans.
We never really get a rough number of how many humabs made it off Ashyn.
Per the wiki (and some of the Canon RPG content as its source), Shinovar has Goats so Goat Butter and Goat Cheeses are probably the most common, and could keep long enough to make viable trade goods.
Sheep too (RIP delicious Molli)
r/angryupvote
I thought this was going to lead to a punchline and joke and now I'm disappointed 😂
I had to double check I wasn't in cremposting for a sec
Hoping for some good crem and it did not come
Maybe we have to churn the crem to get butter
Aha! I have found my audience then
How does he get butter? The same way anyone else does: practice! The more he practices, the butter he gets!
it could just be something that functions in a similar way as butter in our world, and has been "translated" as butter because we don't have the exact same product but do have something similar in butter.
The keep pigs. They mention sow's milk, so undoubtedly they have sow's butter
Or in this case, its shin bread, so probably also shin butter
They have cavalry so they horses. Mares milk makes much more sense.
I'm not sure why it makes more sense, but it's definitely an option
They use pigs/sows. There is enough for basic cuisine but not enough for advanced things like ice cream.
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Questioner
Does ice cream and popcorn exist on Roshar?
Brandon Sanderson
Unfortunately, neither of them do. You can go to Scadrial and get some, right? But Roshar... so, they do get cheese and things on Roshar from sow's milk and things like this, but they are just not as milk-based as some cuisines on Earth. Ice cream is just not a thing. Also, like, ice is not a thing that they're really doing a lot with. And popcorn, y'know, requires maize, which...
Questioner
But you said lavis is the corn?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, it is the corn, but if you pop it it's gonna pop a lot more like barley. It's not gonna be the same, right? That's what lavis is gonna be like. So it is the corn, but more in the idea that it's, uh... It's probably more similar to a barley.
********************
Nohadon is likely eating butter from Shinovar (what we understand to be butter). However, there is a possibility that what Dalinar thinks is butter, is something completely different from what we understand is butter. And if this is the case, then Dalinar's butter is most likely some horrible extract of chull fat mixed with rocks, that is absolutely disgusting on bread but passable for cooking. But it looks the same or similar, and Dalinar can't tell the difference because he's no kitchen man.
This wouldn't be the first such case. In the first book, during the banquet at the fake lake, Dalinar briefly describes what the "wines" are, and clearly at least one of them would better be called whiskey or vodka as far as we are concerned, while another one is most likely something closer to a beer or an ale.
Also, again if you go back to the first book's banquet, Dalinar tells us about chicken meat. And if this is the first time reading the book, then you have no reason to doubt that what Dalinar describes is actual chicken meat. Then, by the end of the second book, it becomes clear that "chicken" is just the common word non-Shin people use to describe all avian species.
Mare's milk is a very real thing. Gordon Ramsay actually gave out samples at a grocery store, and made rice pudding with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz1aAkvzTT4
I'm sure you can make butter out of that.
It's all human tiddy butter.
It's sow (pig) milk, but having grown up on dairy farms, I'm not sure how much milk and butter you're getting out of a pig. They can produce a pretty decent amount of milk for their pigletts, but certainly not to the capacity of a cow or goat?
Unless Roshar has bred pigs for milking, which is entirely possible. In the context that they're talking about the butter, it's likely Dalinar doesn't have the luxury of smearing large amounts of butter on his bread regularly because A: that's not very masculine food, and B: they probably don't have butter in the larger quantities we might expect from cows.
They could milk horses.
They could! Now you've got me thinking about Alethi kumis. I specifically recall it being called sows milk rather than mares milk, though.
They've had 7000 years or so, so if they don't have any better animals available then I think there's a very good chance they've bred dairy pigs
Sheep and goats exist who could provide milk, butter and cheese. We know that they have species of pigs that they harvest milk from too. Real life pigs aren’t ideal for milking, but if they’re one of the only animals that can provide milk or butter at all on Roshar, chances are they’ve been selectively bred to be better for harvesting milk than they are on our Earth.
The world guide to roahar says they have bread spisific types of pigs to be heavy milk producers similar to how we have bread cows
No, those are dairy cows.
Neuralnet
The characters eat all of these crustaceans... do they have some sort of butter to dip into—even without cows, although maybe they have cows in Shinovar? (I can't be the only one who envisions himself on Roshar eating dinner every time I eat crab or lobster)
Brandon Sanderson
Their milk products are much lesser used, but they do get cream and whatnot from sow's milk. The pigs on Roshar produce more milk from years of natural genetic modification—breeding and whatnot—in the same way that humans have bred cows over the centuries. So they do have milk products. Some of their curries will have different types of cream. Whether they're dipping the crustaceans depends on the culture. For instance, Horneaters have teeth that break claws. Their back molars are different from standard human molars. To a lesser extent, the Herdazians have the same thing going for them. For those two cultures, they'll chew the shells and eat them. For the Alethi, they're probably dipping the meat in a curry, or just preparing the curry with the crustacean meat in it. There are other cultures where they’ll sauté it or have a sow's milk dipping sauce or things like that.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/148/#e2778
I was joking about the typo since you said "bread cows" instead of "bred cows."
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Neuralnet
The characters eat all of these crustaceans... do they have some sort of butter to dip into—even without cows, although maybe they have cows in Shinovar? (I can't be the only one who envisions himself on Roshar eating dinner every time I eat crab or lobster)
Brandon Sanderson
Their milk products are much lesser used, but they do get cream and whatnot from sow's milk. The pigs on Roshar produce more milk from years of natural genetic modification—breeding and whatnot—in the same way that humans have bred cows over the centuries. So they do have milk products. Some of their curries will have different types of cream. Whether they're dipping the crustaceans depends on the culture. For instance, Horneaters have teeth that break claws. Their back molars are different from standard human molars. To a lesser extent, the Herdazians have the same thing going for them. For those two cultures, they'll chew the shells and eat them. For the Alethi, they're probably dipping the meat in a curry, or just preparing the curry with the crustacean meat in it. There are other cultures where they’ll sauté it or have a sow's milk dipping sauce or things like that.
********************
You can milk anything with nipples
This is semi-on-topic I hope, but what's the general consensus about Nohadon? Is he really Nohadon? If not who is he? Should I just make a new post to ask this question (I feel like its probably been asked a lot though)
I'm asking because Dalinar really emphasized how good the bread tasted at the end of WaT. He almost made it seem like it transcended mundane taste and was, for lack of a better word, supernatural. Like he was thinking that it was so good that he was having trouble concentrating on what Nohadon was saying.
Would you say that bread was good enough for Adonalsium?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYkbqzWVHZI&t=60s
Jokes aside, the Nohadon that Dalinar kept meeting in the Spirit Realm is obviously more than just the memory of an ancient king. Huge RAFO. The answer likely involves late stage Cosmere spoilers.
My guess is that somehow, Nohadon traveled to the Spiritual Realm upon death rather than the lands beyond
Pigs
Gotta go milk a giant crab
Never ask a chull farmer where he gets his butter from
Oathbringer chapter 5 when Kal makes his way to hearthstone he sees "a churn used for turning sow's milk to butter"
The same way anyone does: he practices
No one's good at anything when they start, but if you keep on practicing, you'll get butter. The more you practice, the butter you'll get!
Wait, I think I might have misread the question
He spits it from his butter dispenser organ, he's built different.
He is probably God.
PIG MILK
Somebody milked a pig and churned the cream into butter.
Better than chicken butter.
I hope the answer doesn't have to do with incorrectly assuming "NON-HUMAN animals" are the source
Mongols milked horses
Army setting, so E4 mafia