Slovenia.

Start with the fats, because they draw the map better than anything else. In the Alpine north and the central belt, cooking begins with butter, cream and pork — lard, bacon, cracklings, and the smoked sausage that gave Carniola its most famous export. In the east, in Prekmurje and Štajerska, the defining fat is dark green Styrian pumpkin-seed oil, pressed from roasted hulless pumpkin seeds and used cold: a spoonful over sliced potato salad, over lettuce with a splash of vinegar, even over vanilla ice cream. On the Karst and down into Slovenian Istria, it is olive oil, and the whole register shifts Mediterranean — pršut air-cured in the bora wind, brodet on the coast, teran wine that is nearly black.

The grain story is just as regional. Buckwheat is the Slovenian grain of memory: not a true cereal at all, but ground into flour for žganci, kneaded into bread and struklji dough, and boiled into porridge across the hills. Millet still turns up in Prekmurje stews, barley thickens ričet in every region, and wheat is reserved for the good things — festive breads, strudel dough and potica. The result is a cuisine that reads dark and nutty rather than pale and floury.

Dairy runs through everything, but in a specific form. Skuta — fresh, loose, tangy curd, close to quark or dry-curd cottage cheese — is the workhorse. It fills štruklji, layers gibanica and povitica, sweetens with honey for breakfast and turns savoury with chives or tarragon for lunch. Sour cream goes into fillings and onto soups, and cream stretched into a paper-thin custard is the reason people queue for cake in Bled.

The herb that surprises visitors is tarragon. Slovenes use pehtran the way others use vanilla or cinnamon: chopped into sweet curd fillings for štruklji, folded into potica, scented through cakes. Alongside it sit marjoram in potato fillings, caraway with pork and cabbage, and horseradish grated raw over cured meat at Easter. Garlic is generous and unapologetic, particularly in the east, where it seasons soured turnip and pork stews.

A traditional Slovenian meal is structured, not piled. Soup comes first — beef broth with hand-cut noodles on Sundays, or a thick one-pot like jota or ričet that simply is the meal. The main course follows with meat, a starch and something sour or pickled to cut it. Salad arrives beside the main, not before it, and it is dressed at the table with oil and vinegar. Dessert is only occasionally daily and often calendar-driven: štruklji any Sunday, but gibanica and potica for Christmas, Easter and weddings, baked in quantities that assume guests.