Cooking
Turning raw food into a real meal.
Bring raw food to a lit fire, tap it and choose Cook. If you've got more than one thing to cook, Cook… opens a list of them. Cooked food fills you up a lot more, gives you a burst of energy, and leaves you fed for a while so you rest and heal quicker.
The cookstove#
A campfire does the job, but once you're Smithing 10 you can cast a cast iron cookstove at the The forge and smelting from 4 iron bars. Carry it home (it's 40 kg, so bring a cart if you're far off) and set it up from the Build menu, under Yard, on 3 stone for a footing. Unlike a campfire it can go inside, on the ground floor of a house and right up against a wall, which is where a stove belongs. Lay the floor first, then set the stove on it.
| Campfire | Cookstove | |
|---|---|---|
| Cooking time | The usual | 33% less |
| Holds | 1 h | 2 h |
| A log keeps it going | 5 min | 10 min |
It's a fire in every other way. It keeps you warm, wolves and bears won't come near it while it's lit, and you stoke it with logs or coal the same. It starts cold, so light it with a log. You can take it down and move it once it's gone out.
| Cook | Makes | Food bar | Fed for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Potatoes | Baked potato | 8 raw, 25 cooked | 5 min |
| Carrots | Roast carrot | 6 raw, 20 cooked | 4 min |
| Wheat | Bread | 35 (can't eat it raw) | 7 min |
| Raw meat | Cooked meat | 10 raw, 45 cooked | 10 min |
| Eggs | Boiled egg | 4 raw, 12 cooked | 2 min |
| Venison | Roast venison | 10 raw, 45 cooked | 10 min |
| Beef | Roast beef | 10 raw, 50 cooked | 11 min |
| Pork | Roast pork | 10 raw, 45 cooked | 10 min |
| Mutton | Roast mutton | 10 raw, 45 cooked | 10 min |
| Fowl | Roast fowl | 10 raw, 30 cooked | 7 min |
| Hare | Roast hare | 10 raw, 25 cooked | 5 min |
Every animal gives its own meat. Deer and moose give venison, cattle beef, sheep mutton, pigs and wild boar pork, hens and grouse fowl, and hares their own. Wolves, bears, horses and beavers give plain raw meat. They all roast the same way, and the bigger cuts are worth a bit more.
Dishes from the farm#
Once you've got animals of your own there's a lot more you can make. These all need a lit fire and everything in your pack, and they each make more than one helping. The fire only offers the ones you've got something toward.
| Dish | Takes | Cooking | Makes | Food bar | Fed for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Butter | 2 milk | 3 | 1 | 6 | |
| Fried eggs | 2 eggs | 1 | 1 | 22 | 5 min |
| Buttered potatoes | 2 potatoes, 1 butter | 4 | 2 | 32 | 7 min |
| Fried potatoes | 2 potatoes, 1 lard | 4 | 2 | 30 | 7 min |
| Bacon and eggs | 1 pork, 2 eggs | 6 | 2 | 50 | 13 min |
| Cheese | 3 milk | 8 | 1 | 25 | 5 min |
| Meat stew | 1 meat of any kind, 1 potato, 1 carrot, 1 canteen water | 10 | 3 | 55 | 15 min |
| Pancakes | 1 wheat, 1 egg, 1 milk | 12 | 3 | 35 | 8 min |
| Shepherd's pie | 1 mutton, 2 potatoes, 1 butter | 15 | 3 | 60 | 17 min |
| Spruce tea | 2 spruce tips, 1 canteen water | 1 | 2 | 2 | |
| Maple syrup | 8 maple sap | 2 | 1 | 6 | |
| Maple sugar | 2 maple syrup | 4 | 1 | 4 |
Butter and cheese come from milk, and you can eat either on its own. Meat stew takes any kind of meat at all, so it's the way to use up the odd bits from hunting. Shepherd's pie is the best meal there is right now, 60 on your food bar and fed for 17 min.
Fish#
Every fish grills into the same thing, grilled fish, worth 22 on your food bar. The difference is how many you get. A perch or a trout makes one meal, a cod makes 5, a halibut 12 and a bluefin tuna 30, so one good day out at sea can feed you for a week. A lobster roasts whole, for 30.
At Cooking 5 you can make fish chowder: a fish, a potato and a drink of water from your canteen in the pot, and it makes 2 bowls. It's a fine meal, 55 on your food bar and fed for 15 min. Any fish but a lobster will do, and it takes the smallest one you have.
Food that keeps#
Most food goes off in time, raw meat and fish the quickest. At Cooking 3 you can dry raw meat into jerky and smoke fish at a fire, and neither of those ever goes off. They're plain food rather than a meal, so they won't fill you past 65 or leave you fed, but they're what you take on a long trip and what gets you through a lean day.
| Make | Takes | Cooking | Makes | Food bar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jerky | 1 meat of any kind | 3 | 2 | 15 |
| Smoked fish | 1 fish of any kind | 3 | 2 | 15 |
Getting better at it#
From Cooking 6 on, now and then you get one more portion than the dish usually makes. The chance goes up 2.5% a level, to 50% at Cooking 25, so a good cook feeds a lot more people from the same food. The better dishes take more skill too, and they're the ones that fill you up and keep you fed the longest.
Selling what you cook#
If you're a good cook, other people will want your food, and a market stall lets you sell it for gold, even while you're away. Food on a stall never goes off, so you can cook a big batch and sell it over the days that follow.
Put your stall where people pass, by the camp or along a road, and a signpost next to it saying what you've got won't hurt.