Dune at 50: Fine Food & Drink on a Desert Planet

Spice coffee
Every drop of liquid on Arrakis is accounted for and conserved. Sweat and urine are recycled; the dead are liquefied and their water is returned to the tribe. The fact that anyone on Arrakis would use precious water to make a cup of joe should tell you how highly this drink is regarded. If getting swallowed by a worm the size of a mountain wasn’t such a problem, maybe a few coffee shops would spring up.
Making spice coffee is pretty simple. You take hot water, drip it through finely ground coffee beans, add sugar or honey, then drop in some sweet sweet melange. Bam, spice coffee, and not the weaksauce pumpkin kind we gulp down. Dune fans have tried their best to replicate spice coffee on Earth, a world notably lacking in one key ingredient. Most of these recipes contain ample amounts of cinnamon, creating a spice-adjacent flavor and bouquet. Others mix in cardamom, nutmeg, and, well, hash. Spice is a drug, so, you know, might as well go all-in! (Note: this blog does not endorse the consumption of any illegal substances.)

Spice beer
Of course you can make beer out of spice. It’s probably the second thing they tried after discovering you could eat the stuff. “Tastes good in oatmeal, but can I get drunk on it?” It’s easy enough to work out how spice beer is made, but replicating it without Shai-Hulud is another story. One Earthly brewery released a spice beer creation for general consumption. People who actually know a thing or two about beverages praised its sweet caramel and butterscotch flavors. Homebrewers have tried versions using cinnamon as the main ingredient, but so far these drinks haven’t helped anyone navigate space and time with their minds. At least, not without crashing into a tree. (Note: nor does this blog advocate drinking and driving.)

Pundi rice
No, there aren’t watery fields of rice on Dune. (At least, not in the first book, wink wink, possible spoiler.) Ask the ‘dib himself about pundi rice, though, and you’ll stir up some nostalgic memories: pundi rice is grown on Caladan, Paul’s birth planet, and is a sturdy revenue source for many of the farmers there. The Atreides brought loads of the stuff with them when they took over Dune, kind of like how we bring trail mix on road trips. Fun fact about pundi rice: it’s huge. Your average piece of basmati rice is about eight millimeters in length. A grain of pundi rice is five times as large, or a bit longer than a chicken’s egg. The grain is high in natural sugar, too, so it probably tastes like candy. Just don’t serve it at formal dinners. Apparently that’s what pongi rice in sauce dolsa is for.
Worm food
What’s bigger than a building, has a segmented body, eats sand, and can swallow an entire spice harvester in a single gulp? I don’t know, but it’s not a giant sandworm from Arrakis. Although it’s never confirmed in a canonical source, rumor has it the Shai-Hulud don’t actually eat anything. Adult worms are autotrophic, producing all of their nutritional needs from inorganic compounds on the planet’s surface. Heat from the friction of travel through sand drives synthetic reactions inside their bodies, producing gaseous compounds the worms use for nourishment. Water interrupts these reactions, which is why it’s poison to the Great Worms. No spice coffee for Shai-Hulud. (Note: this blog does not endorse the controversial “sandworm starvation diet,” and only nominally because it doesn’t exist.)
We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dune throughout 2015. View the complete article series here.