This is actually explicitly addressed in ST:Picard. There was one scene where a character replicated the ingredients to make whatever it was he was making, but then cooked them himself because he “didn’t like the way the replicator made it.” That could arguably mean he simply didn’t like the default recipe the replicator used, but later on some of the characters discuss how real, fresh vegetables are superior to replicated ones.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched DS9, but I think they touched on that, too, what with Sisco’s dad being a chef and all.
I haven’t watched Picard yet, but I do recall that from DS9, and ISTR there being some off-hand remarks about it in some of the other series as well. I would think if you replicated all the ingredients for say… chocolate chip cookies instead of just getting replicated cookies, it’s not a question of replicator ability, but more the specific recipe in some fashion - more vanilla, cooked longer, different proportions, etc…
I would imagine that the replicator would likely make the SAME exact dish every single time. So while it might be a Wagyu steak cooked just perfectly, you might want variation in toughness, flavor, marbling, etc… over time. Something like ice cream might be a bit different though.
And the idea that things that are the products of very complicated chemical processes like roasted beans (coffee OR chocolate) might not get all the nuances across, or if they did, it would be molecularly identical cups of coffee every single time, like the steak.
They’d have to either have the replicator programs have fairly complicated variation routines that could simulate steaks coming from different animals raised ever so slightly differently, or cooked ever so slightly differently, they’d have to have a bewildering array of different replicable foods to account for the variations in ingredients and preparation.
(this is assuming that they basically “scan” the real thing via something like a transporter, and then replicate that specific thing as many times as they want, instead of having some sort of simulated model of a chocolate chip cookie that has no actual relation to an actual cookie at any point)
I imagine that on any starship, in any era, they attempt to recycle as much as their technology allows, but it’s never perfectly efficient, so they always eventually need resupply. What changes as technology advances is just how small the inefficiencies are. So a TNG-era ship (like Voyager) could go for much longer without resupply than an original series one.
I remember this episode, and IIRC, Picard damn near gets himself caught in Ten Foward while fleeing the sweep. This makes sense, in that shipboard overhauls are so energy/labor intensive that they should be done at a Starbase.
I vaguely recall Worf, in one episode, at a dedicated replicator station creating some sort of a gift for someone (perhaps Alexander).
In the meantime, I’ve been able to dig out my now-yellowing hardback copy of ST:TNG Technical Manual. Section 12.5 says:
There’s a whole other section devoted to Food Replicator Systems (13.5) but it’s noteworthy in that . . .
So, from what I read, last night’s dinner on the “D” will be tomorrow night’s meal, but can also be a birthday present for the Captain. I would hate to be that OIC in charge of sewage processing.
Tripler “Ensign Tripler, you are hereby relieved of your duties! Report to the ‘poop deck’ for reassignment.”
Yep. My point being that even in the TNG era there were operations that the Enterprise needed in order to continue to operate that could not be done by themselves. Even if they could make food, they weren’t entirely a self-sufficient operation.
Troi probably thinks vinyl sounds better than “replicated” music.
If food replicator tech works like we think
…then Troi just doesn’t like then version of chocolate that the replicator offers. The rest of us might. (Except for the hipsters, they hate everything. Unless they like it ironically. “We reach, brother.”)
Something that only you would think of - but which they would like (I know - it’s hard to figure out what such a thing would be, but even today, people prefer a present than cash, even though with cash, you can buy the present you want).
Or they just pull clones out of storage pods on the below decks akin to Moon or Paranoia. In fact, given how good “holodeck technology” is, there is really no reason to believe that any of the shows are actually anything more than a simulation, hence why the ‘look’ of the show changes so radically between the original series, the TNG/DS9/Voyager era, and the Abrams/Kurtzman productions, and why Klingons keep mutating every few years; production of the simulation just changed from Interplay to Black Isle to Bethesda and finally to Obsidian, with nobody terribly worried about the continuity of stage production.
Troi was also supposed to be the “ship’s counsellor” with empathic abilities to detect emotions, and yet in any confrontation or negotiation she was never able to offer the captain any more information about the opponent’s emotional state than the average person could intuit by vocalization and body language (and for someone like Geordi, the ability to see heat and subdermal blood flow). Troi is essentially a fraud as an empath, so her culinary expertise is also in question.
The issue was that the replicator didn’t replicate chocolate at all, it replicated something that was supposed to taste & look like chocolate, but with a higher nutritional value. Troi wanted “real” chocolate and had to enter a command override to get the replicator to make itl.
