How many different dishes in the world?

[Consul]

I have no way to scientifically back this up, but I have a suspicion.

I am wondering, if I were to start now (age 29), would it be possible for me to eat three dishes a day and never repeat a dish until the day I die? I think it just may be.

Any thoughts?

Food for thought, anyway.

 

[middie]

consul i'm pretty sure you'll never eat the same thing twice with all the twists on one dish and a twist on another. the possibilities are pretty much endless.

 

[Andy M.]

consul i'm pretty sure you'll never eat the same thing twice with all the twists on one dish and a twist on another. the possibilities are pretty much endless.

...not to mention all the new dishes created every day...

 

[middie]

oh yeah those too andy. and new ones yet to come

 

[Consul]

Well, I was trying to avoid slight variations on dishes as an issue. Omitting the basil from the otherwise same old spaghetti sauce doesn't really count as a new dish to me.

This subject came up while my mother and I were watching (the original) Iron Chef. We were speculating on how many dishes old Kaga got to try over the course of the six years it ran. I think the final total was somewhere over 2,500 dishes. So of course we started extrapolating from there.

 

[ironchef]

You could do this and still have plenty of dishes to share. Say you start with every single restaurant in America, ommiting duplicate or variant but similar dishes. By the time you'd finish, thousands of new restaurants with hundreds of thousands of new dishes will be waiting for you.

 

[Lugaru]

Heck... all it takes is one single urban chinese fast food restaurant to get you through your first few months of experimentation. By mixing different combinations of 4 sauces, 10 vegetables and 5 types of meat they put together a menu with 100 different dishes.

 

[Consul]

Cool! Thanks to everyone responding thus far. It's nice to know there's a whole culinary world out there.

And to think so many people eat the same old dishes for all of their lives. A pity, really.

 

[jkath]

Just think of how many cookbooks in how many languages there are!
Darren - you ought to try to eat something different each meal for a month and tell us your daily progress.
It would be quite fun indeed!

 

[kitchenelf]

You might have to travel to some out-of-the-way places to get some ingredients but how bad could that be?????

 

[daisy]

I reckon you could probably live several life-times and eat a different meal every day! I was young and foolish once, and hatched a plan to collect 'every recipe in the world'. Who was I trying to kid, huh? I have thousands upon thousands of recipes in my collection, and I don't think I've even scratched the surface.

For instance, I haven't collected recipes for guinea pig or dog or cockroaches or hogs heads; I haven't collected any Japanese recipes, and I don't usually collect recipes with names I can't pronounce - which means a lot of Russian and Eastern European and African and Middle Eastern recipes, just for starters.

I notice a lot of Jewish recipes, but I haven't collected many of these because they use things I've never heard of, like matzo.

I also haven't collected a lot of Mexican or Tex-Mex recipes, because HOT isn't to my taste.

I didn't collect the Garlic Ice Cream recipe I once spotted because it sounded just too gross. Plenty of recipes come into the 'gross' category!

Obviously, I've had my work cut out collecting everything in between!! Especially when there are millions of new recipes being invented every day.

 

[SpiceUmUp]

It is said you can eat at a different restaurant three times a day for 5 years and never repeat. I imagine that you could eat a different meal three times a day for life and never repeat. I know I would like to try!

 

[GB]

I would not be surprised if you could eat a different type of cuisine for each meal for a lifetime, not just a different dish.

 

[Michael in FtW]

Humm ... if you lived another 50 years, and ate 3 meals a day, that would be (50 x 365.25 x 3) ... 54,787 meals!

 

[Consul]

Darren - you ought to try to eat something different each meal for a month and tell us your daily progress.

That would be a lot of fun. Maybe I can set up a blog or something to chronicle it.

 

[kleenex]

Humm ... if you lived another 50 years, and ate 3 meals a day, that would be (50 x 365.25 x 3) ... 54,787 meals!

They probabily made that many different meals so far on the Food TV network alone.

 

[Claire]

I absolutely believe you could go a lifetime w/o repeating. A few years ago a woman decided to go through the original Julia Child cookbook, one recipe per day (Meal? Don't remember). Anyone remember that experiment? I don't remember how long it took her to go through the book, but it was interesting.