Period appropriate:
[...]
Toy for the wealthy:
The point I'm trying to make is that the exclusivity of most of this to the wealthy for that same reason of economy of scale is why it shouldn't be an assumed part of every worldgen human civilization.
There were water clocks in atiquity, too, but they're only in the game as emergent gameplay because they're exceptional things that only a few people have ever done, and hence, they're unique selling points of individual player fortresses, rather than seeing giant pump-and-pressure-plate-based mechanical systems in every random fort or human town.
Keeping ice houses strictly in the realm of emergent gameplay from player actions is where I think ice houses should go. (Same with qanats, actually...)
To avoid bogging down the thread any more than I already have,
I wouldn't worry about bogging the thread down. This thread is from years ago, and hasn't moved much since then, so it's not like it was going anywhere else for you to interrupt it, and you're bringing some vitality back to it.
Prepared Meals
Prepared meals would need a much more detailed interface to work properly. However, the majority of prepared meals can be collapsed into three main categories: Stews & related, Sandwiches, and Salads.
Well, the rest of this thread covers this in pretty heavy detail, and I participated in it back then, too, so...
I think that's a rather gross oversimplification, as unless you count a roasted game animal as a "stew & related", it's not covered, and I know there were plenty of times people just had a shank of mutton. Similarly, various forms of baked goods outside of (the somewhat anachronistic) sandwiches were very common foods. That's not even starting on any culture that ate rice as their starch... Is pickled vegetables, a slice of grilled fish, some miso soup, and some rice, all separated into different dishes (the classic Japanese breakfast) a sandwich? A stew? A salad? Even if you say the soup is a separate stew, and the pickles are a separate salad, the rice is what, a sandwich? And some simply grilled fish is a stew?
Likewise, I'm not sure you would really want to go into the details on this, as it may require a vast amount of micromanagement on the player's account if it did. I already don't ranch cows because they take up too much micromanagement needing to remember to milk them, and needing grazing pasture micromanagement, while just designating some land for farming and having the seeds to start growing is all I need to have an indefinite stream of food getting cooked. The system should be designed with an eye towards how it will impact the player.
I'd rather see something more like the "mead hall" setup I mentioned earlier in this thread, where players set up several workshops in the back room of their tavern that have some broad guideline for what sort of food they are meant to produce, and then set it out as options for the dwarves (or other tavern guests) to choose from. I'd also want to tie this in with ideas like
flavor profiles (or alternately, nutrition systems), so that they work in conjunction to give players an idea of what to aim for. I.E. you have players set up a workshop serving a spicy dish, one serving a sweet dish, one serving a salty dish, etc. That way, you basically just set up however many workshops as it takes to satisfy the flavor categories, and just keep them stocked with ingredients to throw in their meals.
> Most of the liquids listed in the Pickling section would probably work as the broth for a stew (lye is questionable, and oil requires different procedures).
Remind me not to try your lye corn chowder if I ever come over to eat at your place.
10. Cheese: I am not personally familiar with any stew recipes that call for cheese, although that might just be my own small reference pool.
Especially if you're throwing basically any sort of curry or roast with a sauce into the "stew" bin, there are tons of uses for cheese, mostly as a sauce. You might want to look up, for example, alfredo sauce (and a ton of French or Northern Italian cooking), or pretty much anything paneer is used for.
Also, yogurt is used in a lot of similar ways, including as a marinade, at least in India.
Many types of sandwich use sliced cheese.
Again, this is really anachronistic. Sliced deli meats and cheeses are a modern invention. The entire concept of a sandwich was
invented in the 19th century.Historically, people ate pies. Chicken pot pie is a decent example of a "main meal" pie, it has some meat and some vegetables. Fruit pies existed back then too, of course.
Pies also make a lot more sense as a means of storage and serving to large numbers of people in a dining hall, as you can just set out a pie on a table, people take a slice, and the pie is replaced as it is consumed.
11. Eggs: Eggs are liquid in the raw state (not counting the shell, which is usually discarded), but most bird eggs “set up” during cooking, and are relatively solid afterward. This gives them distinct culinary properties.
Eggs can be added to stews, although the one recipe I am familiar with is labeled a sauce.
> Using eggs in a stew may mean cracking them in directly, or they may be hard boiled and diced first. The latter gives results overlapping those of the Meat category.
In other recipes:
Eggs have a very wide range of uses. Even recipes that don’t really accept meat can still use eggs.
> Several types of bread use eggs. Pancakes are particularly noted for this.
> Egg salad might be considered a sauce, although it is used quite differently from the usual pattern.
Two words: Egg noodles.
Egg drop soup, for example, is made with chicken broth brought to a boil, and then drizzling egg into the boiling soup so that they set into a solid as a train of thin noodles.
Plenty of Chinese soups involve eggs.
12. Oil: Stews don’t usually call for oil, but a lot of other recipe types do, and it offers unique features and benefits. As I am using the term here, “oil” includes vegetable oils, tallow, and butter. Some recipes may accept only a subset of this.
>
Stir fry is related to stew (the finished meal has a lot of similarities), although many of the details are different. Oil replaces the broth, and there is less of it than there would be of a water-based broth.
>
Deep frying is a different category, but also uses an oil, rather than a broth, as the primary liquid.
> Many recipes use a thin layer of oil (including butter and tallow) to prevent other components from sticking to the pan. Sometimes it is spread as a layer, sometimes it is actually mixed in. The recipe interface may make the distinction, but reactions don’t really have that kind of detail.
> Some types of bread product use oil (usually butter) as the primary binder, rather than water mixing with the flour.
You can't have French cooking without tons of butter. Likewise, stir-fries and fried chicken are apparently "stew" now, so you're definitely using plenty of fat or oil for that.
A. Perpetual stew: While this method of cooking is not familiar to modern players, it definitely deserves a mention, since it fits the time period that DF is intended to emulate; a discussion of foods in a medieval fantasy setting would not be complete without covering it.
This would definitely be period-appropriate, but it would be nightmarish to code. We're dealing with dwarves reacting to foods of different quantities dissolving into one another, plus we're dealing with various things that rot, and the rates at which they rot. Plus, if I have, say, a gallon of chicken soup, eat half that soup, fill it up with half a gallon of pea soup, eat half that chicken-pea soup, then fill in half a gallon of onion soup, then eat half that 1/4 chicken-1/4 pea-1/2 onion soup, then fill it with beef soup... at what point of dilution does the chicken soup stop counting as relevant, both for tracking purposes, and also for whether it triggers preferences for chicken because there was a drop of chicken soup in that everything soup? What if it's a chunky stew, how do you differentiate between eating the last chunk of beef from a chunky beef soup versus a pea versus the broth, itself? Do we need grain sizes for these things?
It would make far more sense mechanically to have a system where a kitchen is tied to two or more tureens or cauldrons of soup, and when one is emptied, they cook another batch to fill it up, while cycling the next batch of stew to the front. (Which would be more like what a modern buffet does.)
