A ‘Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ cookbook is on the menu this year

By Rachel Patel, Staff Reporter

The new “Three Courses” cookbook allows video game fans to bring food from the “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” world to the real world. Courtesy of Patrick Ryan Deasy.

A “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” cookbook titled “Three Courses” will be served this year, and fans of the popular video game will now be able to dine like the students of Garreg Mach Monastery, the game’s major location.

“Fire Emblem: Three Houses” is a turn-based, tactical role-playing game that was released for the Nintendo Switch in July 2019. Taking place in medieval times, players are put into the role of Byleth, a mercenary-turned-professor who teaches at a military academy run by a powerful church. The player is given the chance to pick one of three houses to train: The Black Eagles, The Blue Lions or The Golden Deer. The chosen house will be the main group they use for upcoming battles, each having its own unique story ending.

Sharing a meal with other players is an integral part of the game, allowing them to reach a higher support level and recruit more team members.

Peter Abreu, co-lead chef of the “Three Courses” cookbook, said the cookbook was conceived after he was approached to make one for the action-adventure game, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.” Abreu made video essays and cooking videos on YouTube as a side hobby in college.

Abreu began designing the cookbook a year after the “Three Houses” video game release and said the pandemic gave the team more time to design the aesthetics of the book, decide the art style and create the recipes.

Abreu said the team wanted the recipes to be as authentic and as accurate to the game as possible, meaning that if an ingredient was not mentioned in the game it would not be in the cookbook.

“The deciding factor was, ‘how can we make this different from your typical magazine?'” Abreu said. “Anyone can make recipes, but what can we make to get these recipes to stand out? So during that whole developmental time was a lot of researching what food was available in the High Middle Ages.”

Sophomore acting major Kayla Perrone said while she is only somewhat familiar with the series, the characters piqued her interest and she is excited to see the cookbook release.

“I think it’s super cool to get food from a fictional piece of art and then … eat it because you’re immersing yourself even more into the game and connecting to it even more than you already have—especially if it’s a fantasy, because they get you out of reality,” Perrone said.

Perrone said the two dishes from the game that stood out to her the most were the sweet bun trio, because the description of it was salty-sweet and not too much for her sensitive teeth, as well as the peach sorbet.

Co-lead chef of the cookbook, Alyssa Browning, said she first got involved as an artist for her close friend’s publishing brand, which grew over time to become JobJob LLC.

Browning was in charge of the baked dishes for “Three Courses,” and she said she used the work of food expert Ken Albala as a reference to help her decide which ingredients to incorporate.

Both Abreu and Browning said the one in-game exclusive ingredient they wanted to see was the “Noa fruit,” which was replaced in the cookbook with figs and plums.

Abreu said in the future, he hopes to make cookbooks for other game series—with one of the ideas being Kirby-themed that would be written by the main character of the action-platform video game series but in the style of a children’s book.

Those interested can purchase the “Three Courses” cookbook on the JobJob website, along with clothing, pins and a variety of other products from different games.