Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 10 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Lim Yoon-a as Yeon Ji-young
Lee Chae-min as Yi Heon (King)
Kang Han-na as Kang Mok-ju
Choi Guy-hwa as Grand Prince Jesan
Seo Yi-sook as Grand Queen Dowager In-ju
Shin Eun-jung as Queen Dowager Jahyeon
Lee Joo-ahn as Gong-gil
Oh Eui-sik as Im Song-jae
Jang Gwang as Chang-seon
Park Joon-myun as Choi Mal-im
Ye Soo-jung as Internal Princess Consort Sim
Hong Jin-gi as Maeng Man-su
Kim Hyun-mok as Min Gae-deok

In the royal kitchen, the cooks are frozen. Their chief royal cook, Yeon Ji-young, has been dragged off for interrogation after the young Grand Prince Jinmyeong collapsed. One voice begs them to tell the king before she dies. The others hesitate, remembering how the last chief royal cook was framed. Then Chef Maeng Man-su volunteers, and the rest fall in behind him, running into Eunuch Yoon, the kitchen steward, on the way.

A sword in the prison

King Yi Heon, meanwhile, has no idea. He is holding a gift of gocho, chili peppers, and picturing Ji-young leaping into his arms, and this time he means not to fall over. Then the news arrives. The chief royal cook has been tortured and jailed. Jinmyeong, his half-brother, is near death after eating her chicken. The boy's mother, Queen Dowager Jahyeon, the king's stepmother, questioned Ji-young herself.

At the prison, the guard cannot unlock the cell because Queen Jahyeon has taken the key. Yi Heon orders Shin Su-hyeok, the commander of the Urimwi royal guard, to break it down. Then Queen Jahyeon arrives to blame the cook. When Yi Heon points out that he ate the same chicken, she suggests he fears Jinmyeong as a rival for the throne. He seizes a sword at her jibe, and when he demands the key as a royal command, she dares him to kill her.

Ji-young, battered, begs him to lower it. Instead of drawing a sword for her, she says, he should prove her innocence. Under her plea runs an unspoken vow: he must never become a tyrant.

Yi Heon says that if blood ties make them enemies, he may as well end it now. Ji-young insists she knows what is coming here, and one swing of that sword will send everything out of control. Nothing has happened yet, she pleads, so he must hold back. He fears she will die if he walks away; she fears everyone will die if he does not.

He lowers the sword but not his voice. He tells Queen Jahyeon he now sees what her gentle kindness was hiding, and that he will investigate the poisoning himself. If she tortures his cook again before the truth is known, she will regret it. Queen Jahyeon answers that if her son dies, the cook pays. Then she will have to depose him first, Yi Heon replies. Before he leaves, he comforts Ji-young, and she makes him promise to remember her warning.

In the quarters of Grand Queen Dowager In-ju, the king's grandmother, her brother brings worrying news. Principal Drafter Yi Jang-gyun is hunting for the draft record of how the king's mother, Deposed Queen Yeon, died. He is sure Yi Heon means to destroy the Han family that enthroned him. The Grand Queen Dowager disagrees. Since the Muin purge, an earlier purge of scholars, her grandson has exiled people on flimsy pretexts, she says. But he does not scheme or poison, and he has changed since the cook arrived. She warns that the only winner will be the foolish Grand Prince Jesan.

Jesan, the fool in question, is doing fine. The king's uncle, who runs Saongwon, the office that supplies the royal kitchen, credits Kang Mok-ju, the king's long-serving consort, with much of the work. The Han relatives and the king must now collide, he tells an ally, and if Yi Heon wipes them out, Jesan has his reason to topple a tyrant. Asked why Yi Jang-gyun, who led the killing of their teachers and brothers in the last purge, still lives, Jesan says the man has a part to play.

Yi Heon reasons that Ji-young had no motive to hurt a boy she had just met, and he orders Jinmyeong's day traced. The cooks testify that they ate the same roast ogolgye, black chicken, without harm. Naeuiwon, the Royal Clinic, finds nothing wrong with the ingredients, yet the boy's symptoms are those of poison.

So the king goes to Queen Jahyeon's quarters, where Jinmyeong lies unconscious. She greets him with a jab about how rarely he visits. The food was clean, and the boy has seen no one but his mother for two weeks. Then Yi Heon notices a bundle of herbs. They are for Jinmyeong's restorative medicine, sent every two weeks by Jesan from Saongwon, checked in this room and brewed at Naeuiwon.

The king takes the herbs to inspect himself, brushing off the doubt that Jesan would ever send the wrong ones. After he leaves, Queen Jahyeon says she no longer fears him. If her son dies, both the cook and the king will pay. Then Senior Court Lady Kim arrives, sent by the Grand Queen Dowager for the prison key.

Later, Yi Heon frets that the herbs may be clean too. Word from Eunuch Yoon, who checks on her twice a day, is that Ji-young is holding up, joking that she lived in this cell when she first arrived. Things are different now, and he wonders how to save her.

Three days and a silver dagger

In her cell, Ji-young wonders where the Mangunrok is, the old book that brought her to Joseon, and aches to go home. The Grand Queen Dowager visits and asks one question: did she try to kill the boy? Ji-young says no. Did the king put her up to it? Ji-young brushes that off, since he would do his own killing.

Rumors claim the king's judgment is clouded by his gwinyeo, the female-ghost cook, the old woman warns, and without proof Ji-young will die under torture at Uigeumbu, the State Tribunal. She offers three days of freedom to find evidence. If Ji-young fails, she must end her own life with the silver dagger she is handed. Ji-young accepts.

She walks straight into the kitchen during the natgeotsang, the daytime meal, and puts the shrieking cooks to work. Yi Heon has refused his food again, until her voice scolds him for skipping meals. He tells her he missed her. She passes on the warning: people are talking because he keeps hugging and kissing a woman he does not even like. So he kisses her. "That was for the woman I cherish the most," he says.

He feeds her and orders her to eat with him, overriding her protest. When she explains the three-day deal, he asks whether she really thinks he would let her die. She asks if he truly likes her, and he tells her to eat. She sets out new rules: no hugging, no night summons and no drunken kissing. He calls it silly and coaxes her into some rice punch.

Mok-ju hears that the old hag has freed the cook and decides the woman must be senile. The three days, as her side sees it, are a race between the evidence and Jinmyeong's death. The Grand Queen Dowager's brother asks why she released a suspect instead of torturing a confession out of her. The answer is that the family needs the king on the throne, and they should see what the cook does with her three days.

Oryeongji and ginseng

On the first day, Ji-young and the king go through the boy's menu: ginkgo nuts, chestnuts and jujubes, all familiar to him. Too much ginseng, she is told, causes only headaches or sleeplessness. Yi Heon, who has tasted the medicine's herbs himself, describes one small, round, bean-like one with a foul taste. On the second day, Seo Gil-geum, the kitchen maid with the uncanny nose, welcomes Ji-young back and sniffs the herbs. She is sure they smell of rat droppings.

On the third day, Ji-young is summoned: the king has collapsed. His fever matches Jinmyeong's, and he tasted the herbs. A foul taste and a smell of rat droppings point her to oryeongji, a medicine made from dried flying squirrel droppings.

The physician says oryeongji is not in the prescription and is harmless on its own. But the king had ginseng porridge, and the chicken was cooked with ginseng. Together they make a sangbanyak, a poisonous pairing that brings on chills and fever and can kill. Yi Heon only tasted the herb, so he will recover, and the physician can make an antidote.

Yi Heon sends Chang-seon, his chief eunuch, to have the Chief Royal Secretary question Naeuiwon, though he cannot see who would tamper with herbs his uncle manages. Ji-young tells him to look closer to home. Then he pulls her down beside him to ease his headache and asks her to stay a little while.

Gong-gil finds Chu-wol

At Naeuiwon, Im Song-jae, the Chief Royal Secretary, learns that a female physician, Eo Yeo-bun, handled the medicine and has vanished. She added the oryeongji, sent it to Queen Jahyeon's quarters and fled. Yi Heon tells Ji-young her innocence is proven. Someone must have given the physician her orders, and finding her is the only way to learn who. The man for the job is Gong-gil, the king's jester, who is better at tracking people than any slave hunter. Gong-gil sends his jesters out to find her that night.

Mok-ju hears that Song-jae searched Jesan's residence on the pretext of the missing physician. She orders her court lady Chu-wol to silence the woman. At night, Chu-wol tells the physician her next stop is the afterlife. Gong-gil steps in. He accuses Chu-wol of killing his sister Ok-dan and shows her the hairpin Ok-dan died holding.

As they fight, he asks whether the king ordered it. Chu-wol scoffs, and realizes the jester must be the king's would-be assassin. Court ladies of Jahongwon, the palace office Mok-ju runs, die once they are no longer useful, she says. Ok-dan, she adds, angered Mok-ju by trying to win the king's favor to feed her starving brother. Gong-gil beats Chu-wol and revives the physician. The physician confesses she doctored the medicine out of fear of Mok-ju. She is starting to say someone stands behind Mok-ju when they are interrupted.

Jesan's agent reports that the physician is dead but Chu-wol is out of reach, because the jester fights too well. Jesan decides Mok-ju can deal with her own court lady. He orders Yi Jang-gyun brought from the butchers' village.

Under torture, Chu-wol insists she acted alone out of a personal grudge. Yi Heon confronts Mok-ju, who denies everything and jokes that a false accusation at least earned her a visit. She tells him to bring evidence, and he promises he will. At Gangnyeongjeon, the king's quarters, it turns out the jesters' search was Ji-young's idea. She told Gong-gil to stage the search while watching Mok-ju, because Gil-geum's attacker during the kitchen contest had worn a court lady's clothes.

Joseon restaurant

Choi Mal-im, the king's senior court lady, brings him a fever remedy. At Queen Jahyeon's quarters, Jinmyeong is given the antidote. The boy rallies, then goes into a seizure. The physician says he is too weak to take medicine, and he cannot swallow.

Ji-young guesses the boy has simply not been eating and offers to cook for him. When Queen Jahyeon accuses her of trying to flee, Yi Heon lays out the case: a sangbanyak, a dead physician and a captured Jahongwon court lady. The Grand Queen Dowager points out that a guilty cook would not have come at all, and the king orders Ji-young on her way. Her diagnosis is hypoglycemic shock, which is to say malnutrition.

Back in the kitchen, the cooks guess carp or eel. Ji-young announces a dish called restaurant, from the French word for restoring, in a Joseon version. Gil-geum makes gourd-shaped rice cakes, Chef Maeng makes sujebi, hand-torn dough, and ox-feet broth and velvet antler are fetched. The broth thickens into a velouté, which nobody can pronounce.

At Queen Jahyeon's bedside, Ji-young explains that quickly absorbed starch is exactly what a starving body needs. Queen Jahyeon refuses to trust her, and Yi Heon offers to taste it himself, to a chorus of objections. A taster finally declares the broth rich and restoring, and Queen Jahyeon gives her son one bite. The spasms stop, his pulse settles and Jinmyeong calls for his mother. The relief makes Ji-young's legs give way, and Yi Heon asks her to come to Unyeongjeong, a palace pavilion, at the nineteenth hour. She wonders if he has found the Mangunrok, and why her heart aches.

Jesan is unbothered. A rift, he tells his ally, is hard to mend, and Mok-ju will clean up her own mess. In the prison, Mok-ju visits Chu-wol, who swears she has said nothing. Mok-ju gives her a drink and promises to get her out, and the way out is death.

The Cheoyong dance

At Unyeongjeong, Yi Heon appears in a Cheoyong mask, meant to ward off evil. He will perform the Cheoyong dance at his grandmother's seventieth birthday banquet, as he did as a child, and wants Ji-young to see it first. As he dances, their whole story flashes past, and she wonders whether it was always this sad.

Elsewhere, Jesan's men have caught Yi Jang-gyun, and Jesan says the time has come. Then he shows off his finishing touch: the king's maternal grandmother, Internal Princess Consort Sim. Hidden in her doll is the bloodstained garment the king's mother wore when she was poisoned. At the banquet, Jesan predicts, the tyrant will lose his mind and the palace will run with blood.

After the dance, Ji-young admits he looked cool. Yi Heon asks if she still wants to find the book and leave, and says he does not want her to go. He has known all along she was not of this time, from the gochujang bibimbap, the haute cuisine and the doenjang pasta.

She fumes that he knew and still treated her so badly. Then he confesses he never wanted to find the book. "Be my companion," he says, and promises to make her bibimbap every morning. For the first time, Ji-young thinks staying might not be so bad.

Thoughts

The opening twenty minutes are the strongest the show has done with Yi Heon's temper. We finally see the tyrant the premise promised, sword drawn on his stepmother, and the only thing between him and the purge is Ji-young knowing how the story ends. Her plea that nothing has happened yet is the thesis of the whole series. The kiss at lunch is a lovely reversal: she tells him to stop kissing a woman he does not like, and he fixes the problem by announcing that he does.

The mystery itself is tidy and fun, with the king tasting the evidence, Gil-geum's nose and a squirrel-dropping poison that only works with ginseng. It also neatly makes Ji-young's own dish one half of the weapon. I liked that the jesters' search was her idea, and that Gong-gil finally gets an answer about Ok-dan. Chu-wol pays for Mok-ju's secrets, and the physician dies just as she starts to name whoever stands behind Mok-ju. Jesan walks away clean again.

The ending is where it gets scary. Consort Sim, the doll and the bloody garment are aimed straight at the banquet, and the Cheoyong dance is the king's number at that same banquet. Yi Heon asks Ji-young to stay just as Jesan builds the one thing guaranteed to break him. If the purge Ji-young keeps warning about is coming, I suspect it starts with that doll.

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