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[Hurkyl]

Some forts, I have no problem cooking syrup; so long as there are barrels of it available, my cooks will happily take a single solid item and 3 syrup barrels to make lavish meals.

Other forts, cooks will refuse to ever use syrup if there is anything else available anywhere on the map.

The only science I'm aware of on the topic is the observation that cooks will always prefer solid ingredients in pots/barrels to liquids.

However, this is not the only factor involved; in fact, I just did an experiment where I made a fort whose sole existence in life was to produce sweet pods and quarry bushes (I used growcrop and fastdwarf if that matters) and try to get cooks to make dwarven syrup roasts automatically.

I placed a ring of dwarven syrup around my kitchen and then placed a stockpile for leaves (no barrels!) elsewhere. Result: cooks always took leaves if they were available.

I tried many different placements for the leaf stockpile relative to the kitchen (and even tried without stockpiles!) -- e.g. to the North, East, South, even a pair of stockpiles to the North and Southeast. Sometimes I linked the piles to the kitchen, other times I disabled the links. I used meeting areas to get my cooks start the cooking task from different areas of the map. But every time, they would simply take leaves until they were all gone.

What do I need to do to do this?

[Lida_Brainbroken]

Your syrop problem sound similar to my honey bee jelly situation.  My cooks always exhaust the quarry bush leaves first, then make mountains of tallow roasts (yummy), leaving the jelly for when the larders are bare.  The only solution I found was to disable everything in the kitchen except the jelly, thus forcing them to use it up.  Oddly, they don't seem to have any problem quickly cooking all the booze that I forget to disable.

[Hurkyl]

Aah! It's quarry bush leaves specifically that are causing the problem. When I'm out of leaves but have meat and sugar available as the solid ingredient (and not in barrels), my cook will take three syrup barrels (assuming they're the closest).

I'm sure that I've had forts in the past where I could get syrup + leaf roasts without problem, but that could just be faulty memory.

[Lida_Brainbroken]

Concidering quarry bush leaves seem to be a favourite, and liquids like jelly and syrup are least favourable, I doubt you can force a leaf/syrup mix.  You can provide encouragement, though.  If you did have it in the past, I assume it was a fluke.  The AI coding often has predictable, yet often undesirable, behaviour.
Why do you quest for this specific mix?  Personally, I find a a nice plate of finely minced emu tallow roast, or a bowl of well minced prickle berry stew very satisfying. 

[Garath]

dwarven cooks, in general, don't readily take liquid components for cooking - if they have plenty of choice, they'll take something else

[Hurkyl]

Concidering quarry bush leaves seem to be a favourite, and liquids like jelly and syrup are least favourable, I doubt you can force a leaf/syrup mix.  You can provide encouragement, though.  If you did have it in the past, I assume it was a fluke.  The AI coding often has predictable, yet often undesirable, behaviour.
Why do you quest for this specific mix?  Personally, I find a a nice plate of finely minced emu tallow roast, or a bowl of well minced prickle berry stew very satisfying. 

Whenever possible, Hurkyl prefers to consume dwarven syrup.  The mix with leaves are because the farmer's workshop is less fiddly than the quern (Darn it Urist, I wanted flour, not dye!), and I'm already building the workshop anyways.

When I started, DF, I got in the habit (and have never really bothered breaking it) of cooking all my meat immediately because I thought it rotted even when on a stockpile, and not cooking berries so that I can get seeds.

I recently had a fey mood to mass produce Dwarven Cave Roasts -- quarry bush leaves breaded with a blend of cave wheat flour and dwarven sugar, drenched in dwarven syrup. I suppose I'll have to lapse into melancholy now that I realize leaves will make this too hard to produce en masse. Or swap the leaves for meat or eggs or something.

[Hurkyl]

dwarven cooks, in general, don't readily take liquid components for cooking - if they have plenty of choice, they'll take something else

Previous science indicated that this was a property of barrels -- cooks will always grab solids from a barrel before taking a liquid. This is solved by not allowing barrels on your raw ingredient stockpiles (except for syrup and alcohol, of course).

Now that I know quarry bush leaves are the problem, I'm getting the behavior I want now. I just constructed an 'assembly line' for my kitchen:

Code: [Select]

ZZZ=====================
ZZZ=====================
ZZZ=====================
   =====================

where the top line was dwarven syrup (with barrels), the second line was dwarven sugar (no barrels), the third line was longland flour (no barrels), and the fourth line was assorted alcohol (in barrels). All four are set to give to the kitchen.

When I set the kitchen to lavish meals on repeat, the cook will take the four closest items -- exactly one from each stockpile assuming they are all full (and aren't restocked unevenly during the process). Despite the fact that two lines are liquid and two are solid.

[Garath]

The science of dwarven cooking. I must say I'm impressed. When does the tv show start and who will host it? 

[Lida_Brainbroken]

Urist McRamsey, Dwarven Chef!

[Larix]

Good to know that apparently leaves are also problematic when trying to cook with liquids. So far i've only seen it with seeds - a cook will go sixty steps to fetch a seed from a bag and ignore the royal jelly next to the kitchen. It can't be because bags are somehow considered 'containers' like barrels - flour and sugar will be cooked with jelly without problems, and they're completely impossible to store outside of bags.

[Lich180]

Urist McRamsey, Dwarven Chef!

As well as Urist "Alton" McBrown, whose experience in the cooking science knows no bounds! 

[Lida_Brainbroken]

flour and sugar will be cooked with jelly without problems, and they're completely impossible to store outside of bags.

Thanks for the info.  My honey industry produces a surplus of jelly that's difficult to get cooked.

[Sutremaine]

You need to take the quarry bush leaves out of their containers before the cooks will start going by distance alone and not picking the leaves over the syrup wherever possible. You can do this by dumping the leaves but not the bags they're in, but I don't think it can be automated in any way.