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[fortydayweekend]

I know there's a couple of old threads about how to create roasts with a mixture of ingredients, but I've figured out a pretty simple way that I thought I might share.

Basically I got sick of endless cat tallow, cat tallow, cat tallow and minced cat tallow roasts. Now my dwarves eat roasts made of 4 different ingredients chosen from meat, fish, egg, cheese, tallow, wine, and leaves, and for dessert they eat roasts made of syrup, rum, cheese and berries.

First thing you need is a fair bit of space, as you can't use barrels in the food stockpiles. You need a separate food stockpile for each type of ingredient that you want to separate out - one for meat+prepared fish, another for eggs, one for cheese, etc. I'm using 3 x 11 piles for everything other than meat. Meat and fish is 10 x 11 (to store surpluses from butchery & hunting). No stockpile should accept barrels.

Directly adjacent to your kitchen you need a column of 4 or 5 single tile stockpiles, all with no barrel, all taking an ingredient from one of the main piles, and giving to the kitchen.

Above the kitchen you can put a 2x1 pile for any booze cooking ingredients, set to accept barrels, taking the booze you want from the booze stockpile and giving to the kitchen.

Wait for the single piles to fill up and set the kitchen to make lavish meals. The cook will take 4 ingredients, 1 from each of 4 of the piles, and make a nice realistic roast. Easy!

It's important to have more than just 4 options for the cook - 4 piles works ok if you have prompt hauling and steady delivery of all ingredients, but giving them an option makes it run a lot smoother. You can also mix ingredients in a single pile (e.g. egg and cheese) if supplies are a bit erratic. Workflow or some other method to automate job queueing is helpful.

My 2 kitchens set up in this way with only 2 cooks supply plenty of prepared meals for a 200-dwarf fortress.

You don't want to have to separate fat and tallow so a dedicated rendering kitchen can be good, taking from the main tallow stockpile and not making any food.

It's a bit of effort to set up but not too difficult, and dwarves are more likely to get happy thoughts from eating a preferred ingredient, if there are more ingredients in each roast.

[Ramaraunt]

It already takes me way to long to get a proper food industry going. I'm so confused by this.

[Suspicious Pilgrim]

So do cooks prefer to take food items from different stockpiles? And would you go about preventing barrels from showing up by forbidding their storage in the stockpile menu, or what?

[Moriarty]

When you 'q'uery over a stockpile, you'll see an option to set how many bins and barrels it will accept.

[IcyTea31]

This is great. Now I can have my dwarves actually use liquid ingredients in cooking.

[weenog]

So do cooks prefer to take food items from different stockpiles? And would you go about preventing barrels from showing up by forbidding their storage in the stockpile menu, or what?

No, I think I get it. If any stockpiles are giving to the workshop, it can ONLY take from stockpiles that give to the workshop. The cook takes from the nearest giving stockpile, goes to take another item and finds that stockpile empty (it only held 1 item), and so moves on to the next giving stockpile. Each giving stockpile holds only 1 item, and each holds a different kind of item.

[wierd]

I've heard this proposed before.

It also works (but with bigger stored unit numbers) for stones, and craftsdwarf/mason shops.  You assign only a specific kind of stone to the pile, with a "take from pile" order to take it from the general stone clutter pile, then have the workshop take only from the specific stone pile.  This keeps you from getting unwanted stones used in the production line.

Also works for wood, etc.


It just is too micro management-y for me. though. Would prefer a "Force variety" option on the workshop itself.

[gunpowdertea]

Yeah, sure, we all (well, most of us) know how this works... in principle. But then we don't apply it. *facepalm*

I now need to change all of the layout of my food industry and it is your fault!
(thanks for reminding me … again)

[Reelya]

If you want to set this up more simply, it doesn't really require the set of 3x11 feeder stockpiles at all, though that makes it neat and tidy.

you just need 4 1x1 tile stockpiles feeding to each kitchen, and you can change "recipe" at any time by changing the allowed items in those stockpiles. all 4 of those can feed from the same bulk stockpiles.

The haulers can just refill those from one set of large general food stockpiles. Not as neat and tidy, but it might save a bit of space, because less of the big stockpile will be empty at any time.

[keyreper]

just wondering, can you use milk in cooking?

[Reelya]

Yes it can.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31:Milk
Turning it into cheese first will increase the value, but not the amount of food.

[greycat]

Milk is cookable by default; you have to toggle it off for each kind of milk in the z -> Kitchen menu, if you want to avoid cooking it.

But since milk is a liquid, it can't be the sole ingredient in cooking; it would have to be selected along with one or more solid ingredients.

Also, I seem to recall that there is some sort of strange bug about cooking ingredients that are stored in barrels vs. not stored in barrels; since all liquids are necessarily stored in barrels/pots, their selection can be sporadic due to this bug.  Sorry, but I can't recall the exact details.

[Tenderroast]

A solution for the space concerns. Since the stockpiles are designated as Barrel Free Zones, use minecart quantum stockpiles for the "bulk" product. I keep all of my "dry grocery" as i call it, in a single, space saving tile. You can very easily set individual stockpiles to take from that one stockpile, and you wont ever need to worry about space again.

[Arcvasti]

But minced cat tallow tastes so good......

I've heard of a similar method to this which lets you use syrup and booze in cooking. I might consider doing this next time I play dwarf mode.

[Tenderroast]

I think to get the syrup and specific booze to be used, they have to be the closest ingredient.