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[FantasticDorf]

I've sat down and had a little think over things.

The conclusion i've come to is that in order to really overcome the issues of butchering is to rethink how we approach food in general as right now it doesn't really warrant tearing the butchery system apart for a issue that can have the gameplay changes applied without majorly compromising on how butchery works.

0010954: Food/drink preferences are buggy (bugs and references to related reports)
0001180: Skeletons of sentients and tame animals can't be "butchered" into usable bones
0000874: Dwarves refuse to butcher some corpses (buzzards in particular)

Food in itself is very non-broad and will eventually over time be in need of a rework, but for the meantime we can focus upon what we can achieve in the short term.

Flavour

Dwarves preferences towards foods are now split between choice of drink & their flavour food-grouping of which the parts of animals as well as other foods can make up within biscuits, stews and roasts. These go into the BP or are applicable like a animal class.

Salty - This tag is attached to fish, pigs (because bacon/gammon)
Meaty - Generically attached to muscle & offal
Sweet - Made from fruit & sugar, sometimes sweet meats like unicorn & sheep (with the allusion to lamb).

Sour/Savory - Seperate from meat used to describe plants that possess none of the other taste groups though meat can alternatively take this flavour too such as to describe richness of game animals like deer & some wild birds.

Hot - Made from peppers, dwarves will enjoy the spicyness but it makes dwarves in general desire a drink more and become dehydrated, found in dragon-flesh.
Citrine - Not quite sweet, but more sour by mixing in citrus fruits into food

Those last two flavours require imported plants so aren't a completely unfair rule, and dwarves will cross reference whether there are supplies of this food in the trade network with above/underground gardening + farming before forming what they like as well as supplies around the fortress (a dwarf discovering he likes bell pepper plants that grow locally for the first time for example)

Goblins only want and like meat and respectively grazer civilians only like plant flavour foodgroups.

Morsels and Chunks

Size differentiations of meat will help actively recycle and make less useful small creatures + vermin to be as butcherable as any other creature and also address creatures that conveniently drop a 100+ plus nigh impossible to process meat from enormous corpses at once.

• Morsels are tiny chunks of meat meant to be consumed as snacks, all edible BP's that are too small will be converted into morsels which don't fufill dwarves as much but will turn all those rats around the fortress into a meal when 2 morsels are combined into a stew, morsels cost very little or anything so won't produce expensive dishes.

Some hatable vermin innately taste a seperate foodgroup Disgusting - that gives negative thoughts given that snacking upon caged vermin & pets is very common so need other flavours to balance it out. Some odd dwarves might like this flavour as a delicacy.

• Chunks are meat 'boulders' carved off animals that are way too large like beached whales, that need to be processed relatively quickly but have a generous seperate rotting time to the corpse it came from and cannot be stored inside barrels like smaller meats but can be moved around via minecart. 1 "meat boulder" when further processed can be cut away into 5 pieces of meat and vermin will need to spend time gnawing at it to eat it like a barrel.

Bones that are too small are discarded similar to cartilage or shells will be grouped up into a item called a "stack of small bones" (and stacks of small teeth etc) to be used in embellishments and decorations.

[therahedwig]

What, no umami? Pffft, poser. :p

In all seriousness, food like rabbit and quail are traditionally made from the whole body, so maybe such creatures need to be butchered into 'cleaned rabbit corpse' or 'cleaned quaill corpse' which can then be cooked and upon cooking it will produce bones/skull or upon eating. (I guess, depends on how it is made, stew and broth would probably have it come during cooking but roasting will produce bones during the eating) I have the feeling this would be a little less to keep track off, rather than using morsels.

And I'd personally be fine with it if dwarves just prefered whole creature instead of being picky about the kidneys or whatever. Proper tastes-based system will proly need to wait for improved cooking, and I have the feeling that this will probably wait for chemistry as a lot of cooking is applied chemistry. (Though, that too will depend on how much of this stuff will be left up to the generators and how much will be raw reactions)

[voliol]

Just wanted to note that there has recently been (read: within the last half week) a thread about food preferences and taste. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172583.0