SCP-241

SCP-241 SCP-241 is a cookbook called Good Home Cooking. Red-and-white checkered cover, pictures that make the food look good, ninety-nine recipes organized like a normal cookbook. It even cleans itself. Spill sauce on a page and the mess disappears. Tear something and it repairs itself. If you were just looking at the cover, there would be very little to suggest what you're actually dealing with. The recipes change when somebody new opens it. That person becomes the target, and the book builds its recipes around food that can cause a lethal allergic reaction in them. Other people can eat the same meal without experiencing the same targeted effect, although having an actual allergy to an ingredient can still make the food dangerous. Being a different person doesn't magically make an allergen safe. The first few tests make it look fairly straightforward. A man makes scallops, loves the meal, and dies of anaphylactic shock. Most of the recipes in the book contain shellfish. Somebody else prepares the same recipe while the book is still open and has no adverse reaction. Leaving it open matters because closing it and having a new person open it changes who the book is working against. Then there's the cooking ability. People who can barely cook suddenly know how to prepare these meals properly. One woman fails badly when she tries a recipe copied onto ordinary paper. When she uses the actual book, she can make the dish without those problems. Afterward she can't really explain how she did it, and she hasn't become a generally skilled cook. The help appears to be tied to preparing the dish from the book. That is a pretty nasty combination. It gives you food you'll enjoy and enough ability to make it yourself, even if you would normally avoid cooking something that complicated. The peanut-allergy test shows how difficult it is to get around. The target notices all the peanut recipes and chooses a carrot cake without them. It contains lupin flour, which the researchers identify as capable of causing a reaction in someone with a peanut allergy. He dies anyway. A different peanut-allergic subject later eats some of that cake and has a serious reaction, but treatment works and he survives. The book's chosen target gets the worst version. More importantly, having no known food allergies doesn't protect you. A thoroughly screened subject opens the book and gets mostly egg recipes. Ordinary boiled eggs then produce a serious reaction, despite her previously being able to eat eggs. That supports the researchers' conclusion that opening the book can create or intensify an allergy before anyone even prepares one of its recipes. The supplemental tests make the limits clearer. Reopening it can worsen the same person’s allergy, though each exposure has less additional effect. A monkey also becomes a target, while a remotely operated robot doesn’t change the recipes. A protective-suit test suggests physical contact is required. So it can affect more than humans, but the file doesn’t establish that every living thing is vulnerable. Containment is basically keeping it open and making sure it stays that way, including during transport. The Foundation first found it after four husbands died following meals at home. It keeps the Safe classification because the cookbook can be left alone in a room. Anyone actually handling it still has plenty to worry about. Original Entry: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-241