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[Muddy Mudstone]

Does proximity affect choice of ingredients in kitchens? Does it affect choice really, really strongly?

I thought the dwarfs might like it if their constant diet of eggs was varied with some cheese. With a certain amount of effort I milked my two milkable animals and made two bits of cheese. I keep ingredients in barrels on little stockpiles beside the kitchen, which are set to give to the kitchen.

The main food stockpile also gives to the kitchen; but the cook never seems to want to use it. It's further away, I assume that's why. So, I asked for an easy meal from the available ingredients of eggs and cheese, hoping for a modest stack of egg and cheese biscuits, which would allow a reasonable number of dwarfs to consume some vitamin cheese as part of this balanced meal.

The cook kept on trying to make egg and egg biscuits. Over and over again. I kept cancelling, setting up the job again, and voila, again she chooses to make biscuits entirely from eggs. To test for some sort of stockpile settings error, I forbid the use of any ingredient except cheese; then of course she tried to make cheese and cheese biscuits, so I cancelled that as well.

Now two dwarfs have claimed ownership of the two pieces of cheese, and are eating them. So much for my plan. What went wrong? I notice that the cheese stockpile was to the east of the egg stockpile. I sincerely hope that the religious doctrine of always working from the west doesn't apply to cookery, or else how can I ever get a meal made from varied ingredients? Unless perhaps I individually forbid every single item of food that I don't want to be used, leaving only the 2 to 4 items I do want?

[ResMar]

Unless they run out of the ingredient, cooks will almost always cook one thing with itself.

[SmileyMan]

I haven't tried it, but would the following work?

Create 2 1x1 food stockpiles.  Set the stockpiles to no barrels, and "give to" a kitchen, then make one accept eggs only and one accept cheese only.

Easy meals created in that kitchen will therefore only have two possible ingredients - one egg stack and one cheese stack, so should be created from the mixture of the two.

[HorridOwn4ge]

You could always control stockpiles so they would only store cheese and disallow cheese in other stockpiles, then make sure the kitchen is allowed to only take from the cheese stockpile.

[FourierSeries]

Wouldn't one single egg and cheese stockpile feeding the kitchen work?

[Muddy Mudstone]

I haven't tried it, but would the following work?

Create 2 1x1 food stockpiles.  Set the stockpiles to no barrels, and "give to" a kitchen, then make one accept eggs only and one accept cheese only.

Easy meals created in that kitchen will therefore only have two possible ingredients - one egg stack and one cheese stack, so should be created from the mixture of the two.

Yes, but then when I want a different set of ingredients, I have to change the micro-stockpiles and wait for the wrong ingredients to be hauled out of them and the right ingredients to be hauled in.

Still, perhaps this is the best way.

I thought of something else: maybe cooks will use varied ingredients if the ingredients are all on the same stockpile, and the apparent west-to-east behaviour wasn't an order of ingredient choice, but an order of stockpile choice. So I could just combine all the little stockpiles into one like FourierSeries just said. The idea of having them at all was to prevent (or reduce, actually) haulblocking, and the idea of having several of them was to ensure the proximity of more than one kind of ingredient, but really I didn't think that through and one combined kitchen-adjacent ingredients stockpile should work.

Except of course for what ResMar just said. I do have several lavish meals of leaves and eggs already, but also several lavish meals of leaves and leaves, so maybe the varied ones were just created when leaves were about to run out.

[FourierSeries]

And on that note I'm gonna get me some breakfast.

Egg, egg, egg, and mushroom omelet here I come!

[SmileyMan]

Yes, but then when I want a different set of ingredients, I have to change the micro-stockpiles and wait for the wrong ingredients to be hauled out of them and the right ingredients to be hauled in.

Or create several 'recipes' and associated kitchens? Dig out an old mine level into a Gormenghast-style kitchen complex!

The single-use stockpiles can be set to give to multiple workshops, so you only need one per ingredient, although you might want to burrow a food hauler over the various piles so that they are replenished quickly.

[Urist Da Vinci]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96982.msg2799237#msg2799237

TLDR;

It appears that whether or not an ingredient is stored in a barrel is a factor on the order in which dwarves will use ingredients.  Ingredients in barrels get used before ingredients not in barrels.  I always store non-liquids outside of barrels, which is why my fortresses never have trouble cooking liquids.  If all your foodstuffs are stored in barrels, the liquids won't get cooked until all the solids are gone

[Muddy Mudstone]

That's useful information. Barrels are evil. Don't think it applies to this case, though, because the two pieces of cheese had already been put into a cheese barrel.

Probably what I'll do is create an unbarrelled 1x1 stockpile for every ingredient I'll ever want to cook, all surrounding the kitchen, and then selectively add or delete "give" links from the stockpiles to the kitchen.

Oh wait that won't work, because the dwarfs won't move items out of barrels onto a stockpile that doesn't accept barrels. Rargh. Maybe I have to keep all food everywhere outside of containers, like in the quote. Might put some pressure on larder space.

[Laurin]

I really think it's about time for a dwarven cookbook.