Basic Trope: A character can only make one kind of food; if they try anything else they are a Lethal Chef.
- Straight: The only thing Bob can cook is hard-boiled eggs.
- Exaggerated: Bob cannot even make soft-boiled eggs! Any attempts to diversify the menu end up with him setting the stove on fire.
- Downplayed:
- Bob can only make dishes that involve eggs; his repertoire ranges from omelettes to custards to French toast to even cakes.
- Bob can make other foods besides hard-boiled eggs, but hard boiled eggs are the only thing he's actually good at. His other attempts at making food are still edible, but not really anything to write home about.
- Justified:
- Bob is a lazy cook who never bothered to learn more than one dish.
- Bob doesn't care about being a good cook, but he does love boiled eggs.
- Bob is used to his wife, Alice, doing all the cooking.
- Little Bobby is only 6 years old... hard-boiled eggs is all he has been taught so far.
- Inverted:
- Bob is a Supreme Chef who can cook nearly everything under the sun except hard boiled eggs.
- Bob can cook literally anything adequately, but can't make anything that's better than "slightly above average".
- Subverted: It's Bob's turn to make breakfast, and understandably, everyone expects that he'll make hard-boiled eggs. Instead, they wake up and see he has made some rather tasty looking pancakes.
- Double Subverted: The pancakes only look tasty! They really taste horrible!
- Parodied:
- Whenever Bob attempts to diversify his cooking, things end up blowing up, somebody get poisoned or worse...the food causes a zombie apocalypse!
- Bob can only cook fried eggs, he tries to diversify by scrambling them. While he's just whisking the eggs, it somehow ends up blowing up his entire house.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes, Bob can make other dishes perfectly. Sometimes, it turns out so horribly that he had to resort to hard-boiled eggs.
- Averted:
- Bob is a decent cook who can cook several dishes.
- Bob is an awful cook and can't even make one thing right.
- Bob has never made any attempt to cook anything.
- Enforced:"We need a new character for our show!""Yeah! But he needs a defining trait. How about making him really good at cooking?""That might work, but he needs a twist to make him funnier. What if he was only good at cooking eggs?"
- Lampshaded: "Let me guess, Bob. I can have hard-boiled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, or... let me see... hard-boiled eggs! I mean, we all know it's the only thing you know how to cook!"
- Invoked: Everyone in Bob's life loves his hard-boiled eggs, so he never bothers to learn to cook anything else.
- Exploited: When the Big Bad captures and brainwashes Bob, he...
A) ... uses Bob to lull people into a false sense of security ("I heard that Bob's hard-boiled eggs are awesome! I just can't wait to see what else he can cook" from distant acquaintances).
B) ... uses Bob's other dishes as a Cool and Unusual Punishment. - Defied: Bob learns to cook something else.
- Discussed: "Bob, I think you should learn to cook something else. I'm getting bored of these hard-boiled eggs."
- Conversed: "Why doesn't Bob cook anything but hard-boiled eggs? Is he a One-Note Cook or what?"
- Implied: Bob always serves hard-boiled eggs, but this is never mentioned by any character.
- Played For Laughs:
- As a Running Gag, Bob serves hard-boiled eggs at every meal.
- Bob's family and friends are Driven to Suicide because Bob can't cook anything else.
- Played For Drama:
- Same as above, except that the characters in question are main characters.
- Alice asks Bob to cook a meatloaf for a family dinner. Bob has never had to cook anything but hard-boiled eggs before, so despite his attempts to follow the recipe he was given, he sets the kitchen on fire. The fire burns Troperville to the ground, and every main character dies except Miriam, who was conveniently out of town. When she learns that all of her friends are dead, she suffers a severe case of Survivor Guilt.
Back to One-Note Cook
