Anyone who’s been a part of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign can tell you that long before the dice start rolling, you need to create your characters. There’s a lot to consider when piecing together a character for your campaign—class, race, etc—but there’s maybe no character component that’s captured the internet’s imagination quite like alignments.
For those new to D&D, alignments are categories that shape what decisions or actions your character makes, their world view, and how they interact with your party and NPCs (non-playable characters) alike. Now that you know a little bit about how alignments work, or even if you already knew everything about them before clicking on the link to this article (love you, nerds), I’m sure you’re wondering: what would be each alignment’s signature dish? Allow me to tell you what recipe comes to mind when thinking about every alignment.
Lawful Good: Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Lawful Good characters have a reputation for sticking to the rules, being the hero, protecting people, and some would say, being a goody-two shoes. Similarly, there might not be a more classic, wholesome dish than macaroni and cheese. From elementary school dinners to lonely college dorm rooms, it can conjure up a sense of comfort and even insulation from the cruelties of the outside world. If that’s not heroic, I’m not sure what is.
Neutral Good: Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies
From the D&D fandom wiki page, “A neutral good character believes in altruism over all else.” What could be more of a culinary signifier of selfless-ness than making chocolate chip cookies from scratch? Sure you could’ve gone for the store-bought, ready-made cookies, or even the cookie dough made to pop in the oven for 15 or so minutes, but going the extra mile to take time and make the dough from scratch? That is something altruistic indeed.
Chaotic Good: Rainbow Crepe Cake
Chaotic Good characters are often recognized for their rebellious nature and valuing the freedom of all, but also for just being fun, but moral. In my humble opinion, nothing says “chaotic good” like taking two incredibly delicious individual components (cakes and crepes) and turning them into something truly magical! Dazzle your friends and defy culinary expectations by serving up this colorful confection, which is guaranteed to be a fun time for all.
Lawful Neutral: Vegan Chicken and Waffles
Lawful Neutral characters are described as holding “principle” as their highest virtue, judging and treating everyone equally. What better way to represent this sentiment than making a dish that (mostly) everyone can eat, and enjoy? Vegan chicken and waffles is bound to be a crowd-pleaser, and I’m sure you can make adjustments to the waffle recipe to make it gluten-free, or just go with store-bought GF waffles! Either way, you can customize this dish as much as needed, which seems pretty egalitarian – and delicious! – to me.
True Neutral: Lazy (Vegan) Banana Pancakes
This next character alignment is about exactly what it sounds like: True Neutrals hold no alignment, and operate sometimes solely based on their personal needs. These “lazy” vegan banana pancakes (made using items you can probably find in your kitchen at any given time) speaks to this alignment mainly because it’s convenient, and also because it feels like the most neutral dish on this list. Enjoy it, because things are about to take a turn, folks.
Chaotic Neutral: Boris Karloff’s Guacamole
Chaotic Neutral characters are somewhat like Chaotic Good characters in that they follow their own whims and desires, but they lack the ability to self-sacrifice you might find in a Chaotic Good character. Boris Karloff’s infamous guacamole recipe is the best fit I can think of for this alignment. Like any guacamole recipe it includes standard ingredients such as tomatoes and onions, but another addition is all Karloff (yes I’m talking about the cooking sherry), and it makes this recipe clearly his own take on the dish. It’s bound to please at least one person, even if he’s long gone from this world.
Lawful Evil: None Pizza With Left Beef
Folks, we’ve made it to Lawful Evil. An alignment that’s fairly to the point (the D&D fandom wiki describes them simply as “tyrants”), I could think of no better dish than the internet’s favorite pizza meme, None Pizza With Left Beef. You don’t even have to cook anything with this one, you just have the peons at your chain pizza place of choice do the dirty work for you. Inciting such nefarious evil as this——a sauce-less, cheese-less, but beef-covered pizza—is truly terrifying.
Neutral Evil: SPAM ‘n’ Limas
According to the D&D fandom wiki, Neutral Evil characters will do whatever is best for them/their evil purposes and not worry about harming others to achieve it, as long as they can get away with it. I don’t know if anyone could get away with making “SPAM ‘n’ Limas” today, but it would certainly hurt a lot of people if they did. Celery leaves, lima beans, tomato sauce and spam sound like a combination only a monster would have dreamt up.
Chaotic Evil: Beef Fudge
Y’all, I don’t want to believe this was a thing, but apparently it was. I’m getting ahead of myself though, so let me break down what a Chaotic Evil character is all about. Malevolent and merciless, they are hellbent on achieving their own goals, even through destructive means. I can only shudder to think at the slimy goals of whoever dreamed up the recipe for “Beef Fudge,” but I can assure you that there is no more malevolent culinary force currently existing. This unholy alliance looks like an unassuming chocolate fudge, but also contains shredded pot roast. Thanks, I hate it!!!
As we’ve seen on the course of this wild journey, there truly is a dish for every D&D alignment. You can substitute your favorite dishes here or disagree with me on some of the interpretations I’ve presented, but if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Beef Fudge needs to be destroyed at all costs.