I can think of a couple of ways of measuring this. one would be to look for the total number of published recipes around the world. This would presumably include lots of duplication, since there must be thousands of published recipes for meatloaf, for example, but it would give an upper bound, and of course, it would be easier to set some objective standard for considering recipes to be the same or not. (The simplest would be by name, meaning you’d only need to try one recipe for “Meatloaf,” but another one for “Mom’s Meatloaf,” and one for “Classic Meatloaf,” etc.) You wouldn’t necessarily try every variety of apple this way (nor would you actually try every variation of meatloaf, but you’d certainly get all you could possibly want!) but you’d almost get every kind of ingredient, and many recipes are very simple; you’d probably have dozens of named recipes for fruit trays, for example, that would call for sliced apples with nothing added to them.
The other option, probably much easier, would be to eat every kind of agricultural product as defined by government classification. You would probably eat every ingredient, and most of them, you would probably want (or need) to cook, so you’d get quite a lot of different dishes as well. You’d want to use lists from every country, which would require a lot of consolidation, since most countries would have lots of duplicates. OTOH, it would clear up some ambiguity. If there is no legal difference between a Braeburn apple and a Golden Delicious in any jurisdiction, then I think it’s fair to say they are the same “thing.”
I did something similar a few years ago. I had never eaten parsnips, saw them in the shop and tried them. I loved them - mashed or baked. They are fragrant and awesome, except for the woody middle bit.
So I decided to try some new fruit or vegetable every week. Sometimes I’d try more than one, we get lots of Asian vegetables here and you can try several in one dish. It didn’t take me very long to run out of new taste sensations, it’s a long time now since I’ve seen a fruit or vegetable that I haven’t eaten.
Since everything is different due to random mutations, perhaps a simpler way of looking at it would be to look at how long it would take you to consume the Earth’s entire edible biomass. Wiki says the total biomass is 560 billion tons (~500 billion tonnes). That ignores bacteria. Of this, livestock is 700M tonnes and crops 2B tonnes. Add in ~2B tonnes for edible marine life. Add in another 0.1B tonnes if you’re feeling cannibalistic. Take 10% of that to account for bone, skin, preparation, etc. If you consume 1 Kg per day, that’ll take you a mere 470 billion days.
There’s always the possibility that it’s not possible at all. If new edible things are created fater than you can eat them, then you will be forever losing ground.
I don’t think that this is true today, but if genetics keeps developing then I could see a time coming where new types of food are introduced on a daily basis.
If we’re talking about recipes, it’s almost certainly the case that more new ones are being created than I could keep up with - after all, that would only need to be a few platefuls of recipes per day.
I just popped into this thread to suggest exactly this. It’s already being discussed in these nearby threads here and here (the Frankenburger threads).
Essentially irrelevant anecdote :
A former friend, who was a mathematics professor, told me once that it was the same train of thought (except with candies) he had as a kid that led him to become a mathematician.
How about eating more recipes/foods/dishes and documenting them than anyone else? A personal and publicized Smithsonian of foods currently available would make interesting reading today and in the future.
If it means I have to eat frankenmeat, I might just change my username. Seriously, I’m actually curious about trying the Lake Victoria Compressed Midge Burger. But the idea of eating artificially-cultured meat leaves me completely cold.
Sorry to be a downer but I don’t think it’s even remotely possible without major stipulations. First, you’ll have to cut down on the variety of “apples” to just “an apple” because if you don’t, then you’ll be pressed to try every type of pear, orange, peach - not to mention beer, wine, and liquor. So instead of bartletts and Beefeater. Are we not counting liquids? Another caveat. But soups? Stews?
Brands of things would make it hard because products get discontinued. If you didn’t get your fill of Hi-C or Crystal Coke (the drink, not the… other kind) you’re out of luck. Non liquids would include crispy m&m’s, 3-d doritos, and Heinz purple ketchup. So only generic versions.
Then you’ll have to rule out the variants. Sure you’ve had meatloaf but you haven’t had MY meatloaf. As a concession, I think you’ll have to aspire to only eat every edible ingredient because the permutations of combinations approaches infinity.
Even then, the exotic ingredients would be really tough to get a hold of. I’m not talking about Beluga caviar either. I’m wondering how you intend to get your hands on a Coelacanth. Or Siberian tiger. Or giant Panda. Or a species burrowed deep in the Amazon rain forest that we haven’t discovered yet.
I’m probably not very consistently anything - the idea of growing meat in a test tube is (IMO) a fascinating science experiment, but a weird idea for a food source - I’d probably feel the same way if someone showed me a way to make something that resembled strawberry jam out of cabbages - I’d be impressed at the technique, but a bit disappointed if they were hoping I’d spread it on my toast every morning.
The most recent edition of The Joy of Cooking has 4500 recipes. Maybe you could make and eat all of those. Spaced out over forty years, it’s a little over two a week.
