Culinary Librarian - 1 - Cherry Tart

Cherry Tart

Take the fairest Cherries you can get, and pick them clean from the leaves and stalks: spread out your Coffin as for your Pippin-Tart and cover the bottom with Sugar, then cover the Sugar all over with Cherries, then cover those Cherries with Sugar, some sticks of Cinnamon, and here and there a Clove; then lay in more Cherries, and so more Sugar, Cinnamon and Cloves, till the coffin be filled up: then cover it, and bake it in all points, as the Codlin and Pippin Tart, and so serve it: and in the same manner you may make Tarts of Gooseberries, Strawberries, Rasberries, Bilberries, or any Berry whatsoever.

-The English Hus-wife, 1623

Magnolia walked into the culinary archives, ready for a long day of sifting through primary sources. She stopped at the front desk to sign in. Sonya, the librarian charged with managing the culinary archive, greeted her with a smile. “Back at it again, huh?” she asked. “I feel like you’re here even more than I am.”

Magnolia laughed a little, tucking a lock of wine-red hair behind her ear. This was, of course, untrue. While Magnolia often visited the culinary archives to do research for her PhD thesis, the archives were practically Sonya’s whole life. University budget cuts meant Sonya was the only librarian assigned to this collection of university archives. In theory, she was only supposed to be there from 8am to 5pm, with a lunch hour thrown in there somewhere, but she was nothing if not dedicated to her work. She tended to show up early and stay late, ensuring the archives were open for whoever needed them. “Don’t worry, I’ll be here to bug you for a long while yet. The history of butter usage in 20th century American households isn’t going to write itself!” Magnolia said brightly as she wrote her name down on the sign-in sheet, along with the time she’d arrived.

“Anything I can grab for you while you get started?”

“That first edition of Joy of Cooking would be great, and any Fannie Farmer cookbooks you have that aren’t on the shelves out here.”

“You got it.” Sonya stood and headed toward a door marked for library staff only. Magnolia tried not to stare. She had been coming to the archives for a couple months at that point, but she still wasn’t inured to Sonya’s… well, everything.

Sonya was tall, and looked even more dramatically so in her three-inch pumps. Magnolia was a scant 5’2”, so she wasn’t always great at guessing heights, but she guessed the librarian was a little over six feet tall in heels. She had one of those rare hourglass figures that looked straight out of mid-century pinup art, with a few extra pounds for dramatic effect. She wasn’t slim, but her proportions gave the illusion that her waist was impossibly petite, while her bust and hips flared out dramatically. Her clothes only emphasized this. Most days, she wore pencil skirts that fit like a glove, with white button-up shirts tucked into them. Today, she was wearing a black knitted cardigan with three-quarter sleeves over her button-up, and her blonde hair was styled in loose waves down her back. It was like seeing Joan from Mad Men dressed up as a sexy librarian.

Though Magnolia was not above lusting after women purely because they were hot, Sonya was also so smart it made Magnolia a little weak in the knees. Their interactions were usually brief and almost exclusively pertained to Magnolia’s research for her thesis, but even those short conversations showcased the librarian’s encyclopedic knowledge of history, cookery, and food. The university’s culinary archives spanned five centuries of American food history and Sonya seemed to know every title in the archives intimately.

Magnolia had learned during their conversations that Sonya was particularly interested in American home cooking during the colonial era, and had she not already put in weeks of research and writing on her thesis, she would’ve been tempted to switch topics just to have more to discuss with Sonya.

As it was, she averted her eyes from Sonya’s swaying hips and went to find a table to work at. She pulled out her laptop and phone, settling in for a day of filling in spreadsheets and writing notes about butter.

She scrolled through her work from the day before, getting into the proper headspace for research. She hadn’t exactly dreamt of being a scholar at the forefront of the recent history of butter in the kitchen, but she had thrown herself into the topic once she’d landed on it. Magnolia had been interested in history since she was a kid, to the point that she’d ended up majoring in it. When she decided to go to grad school, her focus had narrowed further to 20th century U.S. history, and more specifically to food.

That she’d chosen to study food wasn’t particularly surprising. Growing up, she’d loved digging through her parents’ extensive cookbook collection. They had hundreds, ranging from everyday classics that stayed in the kitchen and were filled with handwritten notes to older cookbooks filled with drawings of elaborate (and disgusting-looking) Jell-O molds. Her parents had both shown love through food, and Magnolia had internalized a lot of that. They had allowed her to help in the kitchen from the time she could be trusted to hold a knife, so by the time she was old enough to have crushes, she was a better cook than most adults.

Little Magnolia had quickly discovered how much she liked watching girls eat her cooking. She liked it most when they would greedily eat everything she made and complain about how full they were, only to scarf down more of her cooking if she offered it. As an adult, she found that she gravitated toward girls with soft bellies and big appetites, and she was happiest when both their stomachs and their appetites kept getting bigger. There was no rush quite like presenting a hot girl with a belly swollen from an overly rich dinner with a fresh batch of warm cookies and watching her eat every one, even as she protested that she shouldn’t. In Magnolia’s mind, full stomachs and extra poundage were all visible proof of her affection.

So of course she was now trawling through century-old cookbooks and making graphs about butter amounts in recipes over time. What else would she have studied? Wars? Far less important, in her mind.

Sonya arrived and set a short stack of old books on the table. Magnolia noticed that Sonya’s nails were painted white, with little decals of pies and cakes painted on top. The grad student found them so adorable that she could barely keep herself from squealing over them. “Let me know if you need anything else,” Sonya send, tapping the stack of books before she headed back to the front desk.

“This should keep me busy for a while. Thank you so much,” she replied.

Sonya waved a hand dismissively as she sat down. “It’s what I’m here for.”

Magnolia allowed herself a quick moment to note Sonya’s tits straining at the fabric of her crisp white shirt as they very nearly rested on the desk in front of her. After composing herself once more, she forced herself to open up Joy of Cooking. There was a time and place for horny, and the archives were not it.

***

That evening, Sonya left the library late. Again. It was close to seven, which meant she’d been at work for close to twelve hours. She’d hardly had a moment to breathe, and had long since digested the energy bar she’d managed to scarf down around noon. Her stomach grumbled as she approached her car. The thought of food made her groan exhaustedly. The idea of going home and having to cook made her want to lie down right there in the parking lot. Quite frankly, even eating seemed like too much of a task. She was grateful that it wasn’t too late, at least. That meant she could pick up something that was reasonably healthy on her way home.

As she drove toward home, scanning absently for drive-throughs, work still occupied her mind. She was the only full-time staff member for the culinary archive at that point. There were a few student volunteers who would jump in here and there, pulling materials and manning the front desk. But there was so much more to her work than that. She was planning an online showcase of some older, more obscure materials in the archive, plus a physical exhibit that was coming up in just a few months. And that didn’t even cover how much time she was spending on acquiring new materials with what little budget they had, and continuing the endless project of digitizing everything. That was all on top of assisting library patrons with research and finding materials.

She realized she was furiously tapping her fingernails against her steering wheel and forced herself to stop and take a deep breath. Moments later, Sonya found herself pulling into the Burger Boys drive through, telling herself it was fine, she’d eat some decent food the rest of the week to balance this out, and anyway she was stressed, so why feel bad about it? Burger Boys had the best shakes, so thick you could barely get them through the straw, and that kind of liquid nourishment was exactly what she needed in her state. She got herself a special shake⁠—black cherry ice cream with cherry pie chunks blended in⁠—and also ordered a double cheeseburger with extra everything on it, with a large order of onion rings on the side. She didn’t even bother telling herself she “needed the protein” or whatever. She was stressed as shit and she knew exactly what she was doing. It was her second visit to Burger Boys that week and it was only Wednesday. Part of her wanted to feel worried about it, some sense of concern for her figure, but she just… didn’t. As soon as she had her shake in her hands and a warm bag of greasy food sitting in the passenger seat next to her, she felt herself relaxing. The first taste of thick, sugary shake fired off enough happy chemicals in her brain that she finally felt like she was able to let go of work.

As soon as she got home, she kicked off her heels and sat down on the couch. She put on a movie that was mindless but entertaining enough and dug into her food. She hadn’t bothered changing out of her work clothes and did her best to eat carefully. Her salary definitely did not leave room in the budget for new clothes, so she quite literally couldn’t afford to replace this shirt. Even still, Burger Boys’ burgers came with the best secret sauce, and since she’d ordered extra, she ended up with sauce smeared all over her hands and around her mouth. She scooped sauce up from the wax paper that had been wrapped around her burger with an onion ring, grateful she lived alone. She liked to think she was hot enough that no one ever thought about her doing mundane things like eating burgers (or eating, period), and was just vain enough that the thought of someone seeing her being this messy made her feel a light twinge of embarrassment.

She finished off the last of her food and sucked her shake dry. She was a little too full, a pleasant sugar high spreading through her body, warm and languid. She forced herself off the couch and to the bathroom, rinsing off her hands and face before running a hot bath for herself. She tied her hair up and undressed, tossing her clothes aside. She would deal with those later. She slipped into the tub with a sigh, satisfied with her choices.

Lying in the water, her belly working to digest that evening’s repast, she felt completely relaxed. Her hands drifted over her body, poking here and there at her tummy, eliciting contented gurgles when she pressed too hard. She felt warmth spreading from her belly and down between her thighs. The sensation was a nice little surprise. She’d been so stressed that she usually just came home, maybe ate if she had the energy, and then collapsed in bed. Some nights she wasn’t even able to change out of her work clothes. It had been weeks since she’d felt relaxed enough to feel turned on. Apparently a hearty dinner and the warm bath water had been exactly what she needed.

Her tongue slipped out to wet her bottom lip and her cheeks flushed as she started to pleasure herself. She fantasized about vacations with as many thick milkshakes as she could drink. And someone with her⁠—it took her a moment to visualize a face. When Magnolia came to mind, with her purple-red hair, Sonya paused for a split second. Magnolia was nearly a decade younger than her, not to mention someone she had a professional relationship with. The image of Magnolia’s big brown eyes drinking her in while her soft pink lips brushed against Sonya’s plush thighs flashed through her mind. She chased those thoughts, moving one foot higher to brace against the edge of the tub.

Magnolia… Sonya had obviously noticed her before. She came into the archive at least once a week. Their conversations were cursory, but she liked the girl well enough. It was obvious Magnolia liked her, too. Sonya knew she was attractive, but Magnolia looked at her like she was an oasis in a desert. The redhead was never too obvious about it, but she was quick to blush and seemed easily hypnotized by a set of firm, wide hips.

Sonya sank a little deeper into the tub and bit softly on her lower lip as she envisioned what a fun little plaything the grad student would be, all her eagerness at a more experienced woman’s command.

Several orgasms later, she finished cleaning herself up and drained the tub. She went through the motions of her evening skincare regimen before crawling into bed, pleasantly exhausted. She still felt a little full, with her head empty of anything that mattered.