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[Kaos]

Does certain items have higher priorities for cooking?


are some items only cooked together with others?


I know that you need at least 1 solid food item to start cooking, but how can you cook the liquid items? my cook seem to just repeat the same solid item and leaves the liquids alone....


Yes, I have "cook" enabled in the "Z" Kitchen screen...


Example, I have lots of seeds so I'm cooking easy meals with them and also have activated dwarven syrup, royal jelly, and several kinds of booze that i have a lot, all these items are right next to my kitchen and are part of the "cook burrow", jet when making a meal my cook makes two trips to the seeds stockpiles that are farther than the other liquids... ? 

why can't he just grab "prickle berry seed" and "dwarven syrup[15]" and make "prickle berry seed biscuit[16]"?? instead he grabs "prickle berry seed" and "prickle berry seed" and makes "prickle berry seed biscuits[2]" 


The only time I've seen my cook using booze is when I allow it to use flours, it takes a flour stack and a booze stack for the biscuits....


When cooking seeds and plants the cook usually uses two stacks of the same item...


When cooking meat usually uses two stacks of different meat/organs (probably because there's only one stack of each since I only butcher one animal at a time)


So, has anyone experienced the same? maybe am I missing something??

[Lytha]

Proximity to the kitchen determines the item priority for the cook.

When he begins his jobs and walks from the meeting place / other workshop he's been busy in, then he grabs the most nearby cookable item on the way to the kitchen. In there, he'll then grab the closest by objects.

If the closest objects are all liquid (if you have the cooking of booze enabled and the kitchen is in the middle of the booze stockpile), then he'll collect 3 of these, and then wander to the other food stockpile and grab a solid item.


It is quite possible that the cook gives seeds the utmost priority, yes. I often see lavish meals consisting only of prickle berry seeds when I am getting rid of these.

[INSANEcyborg]

Like Lytha said, the cook takes the closest items.  The problem is that seeds can be stored in large piles (100 to a bag), so if you have 25 seeds that are 5 tiles away and some bags of flour that are 6 tiles away, the cook will use all the seeds before grabbing any flour. 

[gtmattz]

One little thing that I have noticed in recent versions is that if you have quarry bush leaves enabled for cooking, they will be used to the exclusion of anything else until they are depleted, independent of stockpile proximity.  This is really annoying, as I always enjoyed making 1 quarry bush 3 dwarven syrup roasts, but even if I store the quarry bush leaves all the way across the map, if they are enabled for cooking the dwarves will run back and forth making roasts out of nothing but leaves until they are all gone, and only then will they start using other ingredients.  I stopped using quarry bushes because of this, and use whip flour instead now.

[Kaos]

For me is the opposite, that's why I was wondering...


I have "prickle berry seed bag" 12 tiles away from my kitchen, I have "dwarven syrup"/"royal jelly" 5 tiles away, yet my cook goes picks one seed, places it in the kitchen, then goes back to pick another seed walking right by the dwarven syrup and such.... 


I've also noticed the quarry bush leaves, mine are like 20+ tiles away, but if I enable cooking for them my next meal will probably be "qb leaves biscuit", the same with tallow....


He also ignores fish in favor of seeds....


I'm doing some !!science!! disabling / enabling cooking items to see what the cook picks, I indeed believe the food items have a priority of sorts, it seems to go like this:


seeds
fish
dwarven syrup

[Syrup Roast]

liquid items get very low priority. Cooks will tend to exhaust the solid food first before considering using any liquid items for their roasts.

The best you can do if you want your cooks to use the liquid in their roasts, is to balance a fairly slow production of solid 'seed'(something for the cooks to pick up as the first ingredient) item such as flour/sugar while cooking.

[Kaos]

I'm making a setup so we can test this, a kitchen surrounded by every single type of cookable item at the same distance, judging by the dwarf preferences, you know the lines that go like "when possible he/she prefers to consume so, so and so"


They seem to have a preference for:
creature (vermin or animal)
plant
plant seeds
alcohol
flour / sugar / paste
<creature> honey / oil / pressed cake
<creature> royal jelly
<creature> milk
<creature> cheese
<creature> tallow???


I'm wondering in the case of "consume <animal>" does that mean any part of the animal? prepared organs, meat and tallow will do?



They do have preferences for specific kinds of cheese, milk even honeys and royal jellies.... but I've never seen a specific organ or type of meat from a specific creature....


will they have the same priority for cooking?

[Saiko Kila]

I think it's all more complicated, and depending not only on availability but also on personal preferences of cooks. In the beginning my dwarves were really preferring quarry bushes. Then elephant tallow. But now, after many of them are legendary, and my choice of ingredients is really great (about 200 positions) they make some really interesting things, and rarely mix two or more of the same in one lavish roast. They don't use guarry bush leaves (and I have thousands of them) and they minimize use of tallow. And often create masterpieces which truly deserve the name.  Most of my cooks prefer to use cheese and eggs in their mixes (but not dragon eggs, for some reason) but there are exceptions who like to eat simply. I forbid using seeds and alcohol at all.