Well, you're right, Overdose, there is a defineable cutoff point for Necroing an old, old thread, and some common sense should be used as to whether a discussion remains pertinent, after it's gone into hibernation. I totally agree with that.
I don't think, though, that it's always a bad idea. The "other side of the argument" should have to use common sense too, and not automatically dump on someone just because they Rezed an old post, *if* the old post can still add something pertinent, both to the original discussion, and to the "modern game".
Anyway, I really don't want to trainwreak this particular post too badly, so if you want to talk about it more, and start a new post about it, I'd be happy to add to it, elsewhere.
Returning to food:
I don't know if I'd want to see dwarfs limited to "3 tier" cooking, but it's a good idea. I'd like to see the number of ingredients kept open, like for artifacts, but it would be great if you could create dishes by adding certain ingredients to a "standard formula" (aka recipe).
Meat, at it's most basic, is protean, plain and simple. So you could have a standard "roast with mushrooms and wine" recipe, that requres:
1 type of Red meat + 1 type of Mushroom + 1 type of Wine + an oven and some fuel. There could be a whole list of these standard formulae/recipes, conforming to all manner of cooking methods, ingredients, specialized dishes, whatever.
It would also allow you to adapt a standard formula to please specific dwarfs. If you have one dwarf who likes mutton, and another who likes ham, you could then add either a leg of mutton (pleasing one dwarf more than the other) or a hock of ham (pleasing the other one more) to the "Roast with Mushrooms and Wine", feeding both, but only making one of them really happy.
Then maybe-dependant on the skill of your chef- you could gradually get dwarfs to like new types of food. Like, if you feed the mutton dwarf enough masterpiece ham dinners, they might start liking ham. They'd still like mutton, and too much ham/not enough mutton is still gonna make 'em unhappy, but that could be one way to wean picky dwarfs off of substances that you simply don't have available to you in quantity.
This method would also allow you to have some dwarfs who enjoy certain methods of cooking, aside from specific ingredients, which I'd like to see, some who continue to enjoy certain foods (as we have currently in the game), and some who enjoy certain specific recipe formulas (favorite dishes, that have to be made exactly the "right way".)
And when you're talking about preserving foods, don't forget pickeling. Wine and other alchohol could very well spoil, turning it into vinegar, which would then be quite useful for preserving.
Considering how important alchohol is in the game, I'm hoping we'll see a whole spectrum of fermentation going on, at some point. Cheeses, vinegar, things like salami and sausages, even things like fermented fish and vegetables (cabbage for instance) would add all sorts of new foods for our dwarfs to eat.
Ofcourse, discovering these new methods of "cooking" might lead to all sorts of new poisons and diseases, but that's the FUN part!
Also, I agree about new tools for the kitchen allowing new recipes, but I think just adding a metal cauldron to the requirements for a kitchen would do a lot.
As much as I use my cast iron frying pan and my wok, back in the day you could cook *most* dishes with either a cauldron, a spit, or an oven, aside from an open fire and some creativity. A flat rock heated up made for a griddle surface, and you could always bake things inside of clay. And the oven kind of comes with the kitchen, while a spit...I think it's reasonable to assume that one comes with the kitchen, too, even if it's just a stick of wood.
A big metal cauldron, on the other hand, would not only be a specialty item requiring a metalworker to produce, but a valuable trade item, and interesting. It could even find other uses: in traps, in tanning shops, brewing, etc., and/or for ceremonial uses.
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Topic: Food (Read 4654 times)