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[Captain Failmore]

First, let's take a look at a really shitty diagram.



As of right now, stockpiled food doesn't decay. This is going to change in the future. The problem is, the last time I looked in my refrigerator I happened to notice that cooked food decays, too. I think there needs to be a distinction between prepared food and preserved food, and the approach to food preparation should be volume and resource centric as opposed to emphasizing the production of specific food items. (Which may be covered in recipes later down the road.)

• Preserving food should result in basic food items that last a very long time. (Seasons to years.) The method used to preserve the food should also have a chance of adding to or subtracting from its value. Preserved foods should be both usable as ingredients and edible unprepared.
• Preparing food should result in complex food items that last a relatively short time. (A season at the absolute longest.) Obviously the end product should be at least as valuable as the constituent ingredients.
• Raw food should have the shortest shelf life of all and, if not processed within the month in Dwarf Mode, should begin rotting. This should occur regardless of whether or not it's stockpiled.

This means that if you want the heaps of purple fungus you harvest to last you through the winter, you had better at least dry them out first even if they depreciate in value from it. (On the other hand, cured, smoked, and pickled variants of preserved foods should increase in value and acquire the taste 'prefs' of the items used to make them. Descriptors like 'smokey', 'salty', 'sweet', that sort of thing.) Prepared food rations should be more enticing to your dwarfs than just the ingredients, but to keep food in the cupboard year round an emphasis should be placed on preserving it and then cooking it a little bit at a time. (Besides, it gives your farmers more work!) Cooking should also prefer fresh ingredients, to encourage getting rid of all the stuff one way or another before it goes bad.

One other suggestion is that the kitchen should have a toggle to use seasonings when available. The resulting food items would in the very least be spiced, resulting in higher quality meals and preserves. (As it stands, quarry bush leaves aren't just a spice, they're a substrate. With heaps of meat, fish, flour, fruits and vegetables of every stripe, tallow, and even cheese sitting around in my stockpile, I have actually had cooks use up all of my spices first before even touching anything that could be considered food. That means I had massive stacks of roasts made out of leaves, leaves, leaves, and more leaves.) This provides an elegant solution to the 'beer and prickle berry seed roast' problem that's been addressed with cooking. If spices, seeds, sugar, salt, and non-water liquids become classified as seasonings, they would only add value to meals made to them and catch wider preferences without actually being substantial parts of the final product.

Reasons for wanting the change? Not just to make food production harder, but to encourage planning around the fortress food supply. When you're just arriving at your site, unless you have ready access to salt and sugar, you're probably going to be drying your vegetables and smoking your meats. (If not drying those, also.) As you continue producing and preserving food, you anticipate what your fortress will need and what you'll have to throw out. When the resources become available to you, you can start producing larger volumes of higher quality preserves, and either trade them off or cook them at your fortress when fresh food is in short supply. If fertilizers and pollution become factors in the game, you'll want to try and waste as little as you can even if you produce food in abundance. (That is, if it's going to cost you something to make it and do you no good at best to keep the excess, you might as well trade it off or something before it's no good.)

[Footkerchief]

I pretty much agree with all of this.  A couple additions:

It seems like smoking of meats should be able to make use of the smoke from woodburning.  Coordinating the two jobs might be a little weird, though.

Pickling (in the sour sense) implies vinegar, which could maybe form naturally if you left wine lying around, whether accidentally or on purpose.

I'm not sure a simple dichotomy of substrates and spices is quite broad enough.  Each ingredient should specify a list of ways it can be used, such as broth, starch (flours), spice, sweetener, sauce, fat, plain (i.e. simple chopped vegetables/meats), etc.  For example, a plump helmet could be used as a broth, a sauce, or a plain item.  Then, each prepared food type should specify one or more of those as a base, plus any number of optional additives.  For example, soup would use a broth base, plus optional spice, fat, and plain items.  Bread would use a starch base with optional spices and sweeteners.  Biscuits would use starch and fat bases with optional sweeteners.  Roasts would require plain items and a sauce with optional spice.  Candy would simply use a sweetener base.  Even this idea is barely a start, but it'd be an improvement.

[Random832]

For smoking food, have certain types wood (hickory, etc) increase the value. Pickling could use additional seasonings instead of just salt - and you left out jerky-making which would use salt (and seasonings) but not water

Drying should be able to be made faster by heat. We may need a more finely-grained concept of fuel (I don't mean [just] the charcoal/coke type of fuel) for this to make sense.

Temperature should play a part in food rotting, which would also imply that freezing food (i.e. storing it in a freezing environment, i.e. a stockpile in a chamber dug out of a glacier) would make it not rot (but you could have a risk of freezer burn if it's not stored in barrels)

I'm not sure there's any need for smoking to require like meats - you could just have it be up to say 10 meats of any type (or increase fuel/space requirements and do more at once)

We could also introduce canning - that's a bit above our tech level though. Simply packing meat in barrels of salt might be more appropriate.

(And of course we do need to introduce salt - either mined rock salt or oceans would be a source.)

[Granite26]

Good points, amusing post, even if it is just a rephrasing of a dozen other threads...

[Impaler[WrG]]

It seems like smoking of meats should be able to make use of the smoke from woodburning.  Coordinating the two jobs might be a little weird, though.

No I don't think so, charcoal making involves burning wood without oxygen in a sealed compartment, it wouldn't be conducive to smoking things which requires more oxygen for smoke production.  Keeping the tasks separate is also simpler programaticaly and game play wise.

I'd assign the 'dry' and 'smoke' tasks to the Farmers workshop, possibly the only difference will be that smoking will be much faster because of the fuel expenditure but the end product would be identical.  Both of these are rather simple bulk processes similar to whats already done at the Farmers workshop.  'Cure' and 'Pickle' would be Kitchen tasks.  Pickling can be done with salt + water or just vinegar, vinegar could be made from any alcohol or directly from all the same products that make alcohol in a 'direct' reaction a bit like making potash 'directly' from wood.

[Random832]

What about just specifying that meat is to be packed in barrels with salt simply as part of stockpile storage? IIRC This is how food was historically preserved.

[Granite26]

It seems like smoking of meats should be able to make use of the smoke from woodburning.  Coordinating the two jobs might be a little weird, though.

No I don't think so, charcoal making involves burning wood without oxygen in a sealed compartment, it wouldn't be conducive to smoking things which requires more oxygen for smoke production.  Keeping the tasks separate is also simpler programaticaly and game play wise.

I'd assign the 'dry' and 'smoke' tasks to the Farmers workshop, possibly the only difference will be that smoking will be much faster because of the fuel expenditure but the end product would be identical.  Both of these are rather simple bulk processes similar to whats already done at the Farmers workshop.  'Cure' and 'Pickle' would be Kitchen tasks.  Pickling can be done with salt + water or just vinegar, vinegar could be made from any alcohol or directly from all the same products that make alcohol in a 'direct' reaction a bit like making potash 'directly' from wood.

Well, if you wanted to be clever, you could make smoked meats more valuable by a modifier based on the wood.  (Similar to the menaces with spikes decoration)

[Tormy]

Good points, amusing post, even if it is just a rephrasing of a dozen other threads...

Exactly my thoughts. 

[Pilsu]

Maybe once caravans actually bring you more than 3 bags of salt at once when you place the order

Instant booze would probably be dealt with at the same time. That and stockpile orders

Without careful thinking this would just turn into a micromanagement nightmare that makes everyone just farm fresh plump helmets

What's the point of prepared meals if they rot faster than regular stuff? They'd become rather pointless unless eating is drastically changed to say, everyone eating at the same time (would also give you a reason to have more than 5 benches in your legendary dining room) and the cooks automatically preparing their meals. The meals would also probably have to keep your dwarves full longer to justify the effort. Make it a real meal with bread and everything that keeps dwarves from having snacks all day. Nobles could have their own chef and demand special dishes

TL;DR no one will bother eating anything but fresh plump helmets if you don't make it easy to manage

[Footkerchief]

^^^ Yes, cooks preparing meals to meet demand would be important.

No I don't think so, charcoal making involves burning wood without oxygen in a sealed compartment, it wouldn't be conducive to smoking things which requires more oxygen for smoke production.  Keeping the tasks separate is also simpler programaticaly and game play wise.

I meant literal woodburning, like ash-making etc., not wood-charring.  It would be pretty easy to simply make ash a byproduct of smoking meats.

Well, if you wanted to be clever, you could make smoked meats more valuable by a modifier based on the wood.  (Similar to the menaces with spikes decoration)

Good call, though I'd compare it more to dyeing.  "This is a stack of 10 horse meat.  The meat is finely smoked with glumprong."  Wood in general could have a default smoking value, while special woods could specify a smoking value in the raws.

Also, certain types of foods should require actual cooking.  Magma bakeries, anyone?

[Captain Failmore]

Maybe once caravans actually bring you more than 3 bags of salt at once when you place the order

Instant booze would probably be dealt with at the same time. That and stockpile orders

Without careful thinking this would just turn into a micromanagement nightmare that makes everyone just farm fresh plump helmets

What's the point of prepared meals if they rot faster than regular stuff? They'd become rather pointless unless eating is drastically changed to say, everyone eating at the same time (would also give you a reason to have more than 5 benches in your legendary dining room) and the cooks automatically preparing their meals. The meals would also probably have to keep your dwarves full longer to justify the effort. Make it a real meal with bread and everything that keeps dwarves from having snacks all day. Nobles could have their own chef and demand special dishes

TL;DR no one will bother eating anything but fresh plump helmets if you don't make it easy to manage

• Raw food lasts no more than a month and is an ingredient. (Short shelf life.)
• Cooked meals last a season or more and are not an ingredient. (Medium shelf life.)
• Preserved food lasts up to a year or more and is an ingredient. (Long shelf life.)

Since food will inevitably rot in our storerooms in future versions, preserving food for later consumption will be important. However, cooked food which can be made from preserves will always have the highest value.

As for cooking:

• Cooks will use raw food first.
• Preserves will be used in place of raw food once raw food is scarce.

This ensures that one way or another, as little raw food is wasted as possible. Kitchen and other workshop automation could make managing this much less hectic, which I'll probably go into detail on later when I have more time.

As for the resulting values:

• Dried food should lose value unless it's seasoned while drying. This is subsistence level food preservation for fortresses that either lack access to other additives for proper curing and pickling or for when times are tough.
• Other food preservation methods should have a chance to appreciate the ingredient's value somewhat. Smoked and cured meats along with candied fruits and vegetables could potentially be more valuable than the ingredients that produced them, for example.
• Cooking will always yield a much more valuable food item regardless.

This preserves the kitchen economics of the game and keeps prepared meals preferable for consumption while making preserved foods preferable for storage even though you can eat both as-is. Since the preserved food is available, it's there to be turned into prepared meals even when raw food is no longer being produced. It will also make highly processed foods treated with lots of spice and what have you more valuable overall. The difference between rations of dried meat strips and a spiced meat pie made with whip vine flour, two kinds of smoked and cured meats, and pickled plump helmets will definitely be clear. If someone prefers their foods fresh and raw it's not like it won't be available, but their availability will likely be seasonal and fluctuating.

[Armok]

Magma bakeries, anyone?

Now I want to taste pizza made in that, brick oven advantage over electrical x1000.

The suggestions here are all very good BTW.

[Foa]

Magma bakeries, anyone?

Now I want to taste pizza made in that, brick oven advantage over electrical x1000.

The suggestions here are all very good BTW.

Lava smoked preserves are of high quality, they are just, so damn good! Therefore are treated like an easy meal to a lavish meal, depending on skill level.

Dwarves pay so much for lava-smoked preserves it is made for kings only, the downside is a metalworker bundled with cooking ( or brewing * wink * ) is the only crafter of lava-[|Name] foodstuffs!
Same for lava-roasts/stir fried/fried/grilled... foods, and is always piping hot, thanks to the magic of the forges, made by metalworkers, good for life!

[Captain Failmore]

Anyway, I said I'd get back to this when I had the time. Since a few of you have already gone out of your way to state that there's nothing new under the sun, I won't be starting another thread for this even though this one's getting a bit stale. This meanders into concept territory and involves structures that don't yet exist, so bear with me.

Kitchen and Workshop Automation -

First off, if food preservation is going to be such a big deal, there needs to be a way to automate it to keep it running smoothly without user intervention. The butcher and tanner workshops are already automated, the fishery needs to be automated and probably will be in the future, and if most raw food items will expire within a month of being produced there should be a workshop toggle to automatically start preserving food when it becomes available. (The user should be able to determine how that's done, too.) Toggling this would mean that as you harvest and butcher food, bit by bit it will be converted into preserves until either all of it has been preserved, cooked, or has been lost, even if you have more important things to worry about than micromanaging your workshops.

Minor Meal Production and Other Concepts -

This idea is entirely dependent upon foodstuffs and other resource items appearing in more finely divided units. (Say, cutting wood logs into a few dozen wood pieces, etc.) While it's not a great idea to exchange fun and convenience for realism, I've got to wonder why nobody but designated food workers will actually cook for themselves. When the economy starts rolling, those awesome sounding meat pies I mentioned will probably carry a steep price tag, but the constituent ingredients in their raw or cheaply preserved forms won't. That said, a hungry dwarf that owns a stove and can afford a piece of wood - not a whole log, just a piece - should be able to prepare a meal for themselves.

Now, you're probably wondering, what the hell is a stove in the context of this game and why would we want them? It would be a piece of furniture made from stone or metal that could be placed inside a living space or in a public area where a dwarf could cook their own food. If cooking in a kitchen takes a large volume of food and converts it into a large volume of prepared meals, cooking with a personal stove should take only enough to feed the person using it. (If temperature and heating become more important in the future, these might have other uses too.)

The pros, cons, and other crap:

• Dwarfs should get a happy thought from being able to buy a meal instead of cooking it themselves. Any accompanying thoughts regarding the meal's quality still apply. ("... hasn't had to cook lately.")
• Dwarfs should be neutral to cooking for themselves. Again, accompanying thoughts regarding the meal's quality still apply, so if the dwarf in question is a good cook they should be pleased with their work. This may be somewhat more time consuming, but also builds their cooking skill slowly. A peasant that's been feeding himself for his whole life should have some basic level of cooking under his belt.
• Dwarfs should also be neutral to eating most food raw, but lose the chance to experience a happy thought from having a good meal. If things like dried meats and vegetables lose quality unless they're cooked into something decent, this could result in an unhappy thought. ("... Ate a bland meal recently.")
• Food that otherwise has to be cooked first becomes more widely available to your dwarfs if nobody has to cook it for them.

Prerequisites and other considerations to make this work better, if at all:

• Dwarfs need to eat more and more substantially to make up for the over-generosity of food production. If a dwarf is going to eat, they need to take two or more items of food at a time. Not only that, one of these items should be a substantial item such as a piece of meat or a large plant, or a prepared meal item such as a small loaf of bread or a serving of stew. Berries, small vegetables, and that sort of thing can be picked up on the side.
• Cooking your food at home and bringing it to the dining hall seems kind of silly, but aside from giving dwarfs their own tables at home that might be the best way to handle it. Alternately, public stoves could be kept around in dining halls as well, for cooking and (later) warmth, if you don't mind having a line.
• As mentioned, this requires a finer division of material units to even be remotely sane. Nobody is going to be cooking anything until we can break logs into planks. Finer division of materials has other benefits, too. (For example, not using that entire stack of platinum bars to make one little earring.

The new meal routine:

• Dwarf sets out to find food. If they can afford it or if money is no object, they grab whatever looks good to them, which means prepared meal items first.
• If there's no prepared food but there is an available stove, and the dwarf can afford or doesn't have to worry about the cost of a plank of wood, they can grab some uncooked food and make themselves something a bit more palatable.
• If they can't afford fuel or have no available stove, they'll just eat the stuff uncooked.

[Pilsu]

Cooks would be just about worthless if dwarves started cooking their own food. That's not how their community works, it's not a restaurant