History Main / ImpossiblyDeliciousFood

* The Golden Apple in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'', which causes so much contentment that whoever eats it sleeps peacefully for a very long time.

* Princess Peach is known for baking cakes, but other than a possible exaggerated reaction in the original ''VideoGame/PaperMario'', it doesn't seem all that impressive. In ''VideoGame/PrincessPeachShowtime'', however, Patissiere Peach has to bake assorted sweets [[spoiler:to stop a corrupted child Theet frenzy after a Sour Sous-chef feeds them Darkle-infused cookies]]; her Sparkle-infused cookies are more than adequate to do the job [[spoiler:even when a near-literal horde descends upon her and her assistants at the end]]. And then in the backstage act, [[spoiler:her cake purifies the Patissiere Sparkla, and then their combined cookie drives the Patissiere Darkla to tears as it DisappearsIntoLight]].
-->'''[[spoiler:Patissiere Darkla]]:''' FLAVOR! Oh, so much FLAVOR!!

--> '''Bertie:''' Good old Anatole, God's gift to the gastric juices. Many's the time that I have regretted I have but one stomach with which to enjoy his offerings.

* In ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2014'', Michelangelo was actually doing well at the dreaded ''ha-shi'' where he had to [[spoiler: do a handstand on a swivel chair.]] Until...
-->'''Michelangelo:''' Guys! I'm in the zone! There is literally nothing that can break me right now!
-->'''Splinter:''' Oh really? Not even for the legendary... ''NOVENTANOVE FORMAGGIO! 99-cheese pizza?''
-->'''Michelangelo:''' Starting to break!
-->'''Donatello:''' Mikey, it's a trap! [[spoiler:A pizza with that variety of cheese is a culinary impossibility!]]

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/AStatueForFather": Thanks to the eponymous individual's ''mostly''-unsuccessful time-tunnel experiments, humanity as a whole learns that dinosaur meat is the most succulent meat that ever existed.

%%Organize these below.
* ''Literature/NinaTanleven'': Jokingly mentioned in ''The Ghost Wore Gray'' when Nine suggests that Captain Jonathan Gray is hanging around as a ghost because he'd had one of the cook's pastries and decided he'd already made it to heaven.
* The ''Literature/FrannyKStein'' book ''Recipe for Disaster'' has Franny create a robotic baker called the Muffin Man, who bakes muffins so delicious that Franny's friends and her dog/lab assistant Igor become addicted to the muffins to the extent that they forget about their other interests and pursuits.
* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant'' has aliantha berries, which double as Impossibly Nutritious Food.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'':
** Shade-of-the-evening is a blue wine consumed by the warlocks of Qarth. At first it tastes foul, but when swallowed it tastes like everything you've ever eaten and more. To Daenerys, it tastes like "honey and anise and cream, like mother's milk and Drogo's seed, like red meat and hot blood and molten gold, all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them." However, drinking too much can cause you to have horrible nightmares and fever dreams.
** Weirwood paste causes a similar reaction. It is given to Bran by the Children of the Forest in order to awaken his powers as a greenseer. The first few bites taste bitter, but then it tastes like honey and new-fallen snow, like pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother Catelyn ever gave him.
* ''Creator/JohnRingo'' plays with this in ''Literature/TroyRising'' where the Glatun [[Main/AliensLoveHumanFood *really* like]] ''UsefulNotes/MapleSyrup'', over and above its [[Main/AlienCatnip intoxicating effects]].
* ''Literature/LizardMusic'': The lizards have a drink that is described as being similar to really good lemonade, except it's not made with lemons. In Victor's opinion, it's the only drink he's ever had that tastes better than grape soda.

* ''Literature/Metro2033'': Artyom at one point finds himself in a fairly large station settlement, lucky enough to have plenty of food vendors, one of whom is running a proper diner in an abandoned train car. The meal he orders is very expensive, and is nothing more than a plate of fried ham and sautéed mushrooms with well made homebrew mushroom beer. But to Artyom, a young man who's never ventured outside of a small cluster of stations and has had to make due with bland, low quality food his whole life, the experience brings him to the verge of tears.

* The protagonist of ''Literature/LoneHuntress'' has exactly the sort of metabolism one might associate with a six and a half foot tall, biochemically modified woman with a highly active lifestyle. Almost any food will have this effect on her - particularly anything involving large quantities of meat. Also chocolate. Every person to successfully win her over does so through the act of feeding her.
* The fruit in ''Literature/GoblinMarket'' by Christina Rossetti. Unfortunately, it's also a metaphor for drugs. Or sex. Or... [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic something.]] (Maybe temptation itself.) Once Laura eats some she loses the will to eat anything else, it's that delicious -- but from that day on the goblin sellers of the fruit are invisible to her.
* ''The Queen's Museum and Other Fanciful Tales'' by Frank Stockton: The story "Christmas Before Last" has the Fruit of the Fragile Palm. It's similar to a coconut, but the inside is so delicious that it's worth as much as diamonds or pearls.
* Creator/ElliotSMaggin's novel ''Franchise/{{Superman}}: Literature/LastSonOfKrypton'' had an alien spice that made food to which it was added so delicious that humans couldn't stop themselves from eating it.
* One ''Literature/HomerPrice'' story is about "Ever-So-Much-More-So", an invisible powder which makes anything moreso of what it is. It's introduced as a thing you put on food to make it better, but it also "works" on other things — for example, if an ornery person eats things with it sprinkled on, it makes that person Ever-So-Much-More ornery. (In the product's demonstration, the salesman sprinkles it into a cup of coffee and gives it to Homer, who observes that since he doesn't like coffee in the first place, [[SubvertedTrope it is now Ever-So-Much-More bitter and nasty]].)

* In Creator/PGWodehouse's novels, [[Literature/JeevesAndWooster Bertie Wooster's]] Aunt Dahlia employs the French cook Anatole, who's so good, that Bertie is willing to take part in the [[ZanyScheme craziest schemes]] if his aunt threatens to forbid him from Anatole's meals.
--> '''Bertie:''' Good old Anatole, God's gift to the gastric juices. Many's the time that I have regretted I have but one stomach with which to enjoy his offerings.
* Food from the titular Abbey in the ''{{Literature/Redwall}}'' series is normally described in such a manner as to make your mouth water. Eventually, a cookbook was printed, so now you can make your very own turnip'n'tater'n'beetroot pie! Redwall isn't everyone's taste in literature, but any writer who can make children ''want'' to eat food made mostly of vegetables has to be doing something right.
* Aside from the page quote, C.S. Lewis used this trope in ''[[Literature/TheSpaceTrilogy Perelandra]]'' with not one, but TWO Venusian fruits.
** And with Turkish Delight in ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe.''
* ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Ghosts II'': ''Biscuits of Glory'' features biscuits that are "heavenly" in a near-literal sense. In a normal person, this causes levitation. [[spoiler: When given to a ghost, it "feels like it went to heaven", and is exorcised.]] This is ultimately a negative effect, because [[PerfectionIsAddictive nothing else can compare to the taste of the biscuits]].
* Mentioned briefly in ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime.'' When Meg is recuperating from her brush with IT among Aunt Beast's people, the food that Aunt Beast gives her is described as "incredibly delicious" -- just one more way in which aliens are superior to humans.
** A softer version of the trope is played with earlier; Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace are offered a meal on Camazotz by the Man with Red Eyes. Meg and Calvin happily enjoy their delicious meal, while Charles Wallace complains that all he can taste is sand. It turns out it's a form of mind control. Since the Man with Red Eyes can get past Meg and Calvin's mental defenses, he is able to convince them the meal is good. Since Charles Wallace unknowingly puts up more resistance to the control, he cannot be convinced.
* Fourth-dimension-flipped ketchup in ''The Boy Who Reversed Himself'' is so good, it [[GRatedDrug renders its consumer euphoric, suggestable, and desperate for more]], at least temporarily.

* ''Literature/BoneChillers'': A major plot point in ''Back to School''. A new lunch lady makes food so delicious that all the students and teachers flock to the cafeteria every day to get a taste of her meals, and even fighting over them. It's so good that the main character cannot bear to eat anything other than her cooking, comparing the cornflakes he ate for breakfast to sawdust. However, over a series of strange events, he realizes that the lunch lady is actually a giant insect who implants eggs in her cooking so that they will incubate in the hapless residents, controlling their movements until they eventually hatch and discard their hosts' bodies. The main character manages to bring the bug lady down with the help of a fellow student (who was allergic to outside food and had to bring her own lunch to school).
* ''[[Literature/WindOnFire The Wind Singer]]'' had the underground mud people eating some kind of smoky, sweet roasted nut/fruit that Bowman and Kestrel found tastier than anything they'd had in their whole lives.

* Occurs in Creator/OrsonScottCard's ''Treasure Box'' - the weird rich people eat food that appears to be the platonic ideal of food, the best food you could possibly imagine, every bite perfection. [[spoiler: Turns out that's because you ARE imagining it.]]
* In his short story collection ''Fragile Things'', Creator/NeilGaiman included a story called "Sunbird", about the ultimate food sought out by a club whose members make a habit of eating the rarest, most difficult to get foods. [[spoiler: The members of the club, aside from the cook (who "practiced" from foreknowledge in preparation) get burned up from eating it.]]
* In ''Literature/DoorwaysInTheSand'' by Creator/RogerZelazny, [[MirrorChemistry mirror-reversed bourbon]] is described this way. The protagonist spends most of the book mirror-reversed, so he can appreciate ordinary bourbon like this; at the end of the book, when he gets flipped back to normal, he thinks that while he won't miss much about being reversed, the bourbon will probably haunt him for the rest of his life.
* In Robin Hobb's ''Literature/TheSoldierSon'' trilogy, Everything Nevare eats becomes this once the Speck magic starts to get under his skin.

* The wine which the angel Islington serves to Richard and Door in ''Literature/{{Neverwhere}}'' is described in terms of this trope. Pity that it causes a horrible hangover afterwards. [[spoiler:Possibly a hint that Islington isn't as nice as he seems.]]
* In Creator/SpiderRobinson's ''[[Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon Mirror Mirror, Off the Wall]]'' Robert Trebor gives Callahan a case of liqueur in exchange for a case of rotgut. Jake Stonebender called Trebor's drink "The Wonderbooze", saying that "it felt to the mouth, I imagine, the way a velvet pillow must feel to the cheek. And it kicked like a Rockette. It ennobled the mouth." Trebor, it turns out, is from a [[MirrorChemistry mirror universe with a reversed metabolism]]; what tastes terrible to us would taste wonderful to him and vice versa.

* In ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'', Willy Wonka's confections are so tasty and wildly imaginative that rival candymakers sent spies into his factory to steal the recipes for them. He responded by closing it down, and when it finally was up and running again, no one could figure out how it was possible -- no workers were ever seen going in or out and Wonka himself was now a ReclusiveArtist. Thus, when the news breaks that a contest to win a trip into the factory has been launched, it becomes an international obsession. The [[Theatre/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory 2013 stage musical adaptation]] gives much of the expository song "The Amazing Fantastical History of Mr. Willy Wonka" over to discussion of just what SeriousBusiness his treats were even before he became a recluse:
--> ''From all around the world they called on Mr. Wonka''
--> ''Kings and queens and presidents''
--> ''Even down in Rome the Pope left home''
--> ''And in the fact'ry took up residence''
--> ''Dalai Lamas and their mamas''
--> ''Had such episodes and dramas!''
--> ''Even Gandhi got himself into a brawl''
* In ''Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier'' the Beings (true to their Greek god heritage; see below) have the legendary ambrosia. It looks like a golden jelly-like pudding, but whoever eats it almost instantly begins to worship the Beings. This sensation happened to the Danteri...and ''Soleta,'' probably the most logical person on the ''Excalibur''.

* In ''Literature/TheBlissBakery'', all magical bakers are able to make baked goods taste impossibly delicious. The good bakers just use it to make people happy, the evil ones use it to make people addicted to their baked goods.
* In the ''Literature/GiveYourselfGoosebumps'' {{Gamebook|s}} ''Literature/BewareOfThePurplePeanutButter'', the protagonist finds a mysterious purple substance in a refrigerator that smells like the best PB&J sandwich ever with chocolate on top and tastes just as delicious. Too bad that choosing to eat it causes you to gradually [[IncredibleShrinkingMan shrink down]].

* ''Literature/NinaTanleven'': Jokingly mentioned in ''The Ghost Wore Gray'' when Nine suggests that Captain Jonathan Gray is hanging around as a ghost because he'd had one of the cook's pastries and decided he'd already made it to heaven.
* The ''Literature/FrannyKStein'' book ''Recipe for Disaster'' has Franny create a robotic baker called the Muffin Man, who bakes muffins so delicious that Franny's friends and her dog/lab assistant Igor become addicted to the muffins to the extent that they forget about their other interests and pursuits.

** The cookies baked by Grim's grandmother were so tasty, everyone kept cheerfully eating them even after she announced that the recipe included ''dung beetles''.