Cook raw meat or fish over a fire, or a dish from a recipe card.
Usage: cook - cook the raw meat and fish you carry
cook recipes - list the recipe cards you carry
cook recipe <name> - cook the dish on a card
cook <name> - at a hall hearth or inn fire, cook a
card's dish onto the shelf
You need a fire: a campfire, a camp, or the hearth of a food hall or an
inn. How well the food turns out depends on your cooking skill, which
grows as you cook, and on the fire.
A recipe card names its ingredients, where it can be cooked and what the
dish does: 'read <name> recipe'. A cookbook keeps your cards together,
and you can cook from a card in a cookbook you carry, in hand or in a
bag; hold the book to read it. Every food hall sells a plain one, a hall
of the third tier a lighter one, and older books turn up underground.
Everyday dishes cook over any fire in a cooking pot. Hearty, work, house
and seasonal dishes need the hearth of a food hall or an inn's kitchen
fire, party dishes (the hunting party's stew pot and the long table
spread) the hearth of a food hall, master dishes the hearth of a great
food hall, and drinks an inn's kitchen fire. Ingredients come from your
pot first, then from your pack and the bags in it, and only at the end of
the cooking; nothing on your keep list is used. Eating a dish gives a
meal effect and a drink a drink effect: one of each at a time, shown in
'effects'. A new meal takes the place of the last one.
Grain, roots, milk, butter, cheese and smoked meat and fish come from the
settlements. The butcher at a food hall's counter sells them while the
stores have some to spare: 'list' there shows what he has. A turn of work
on a farm or a pasture leaves you a share, and a larger home garden grows
roots. Rye bread is baked from grain, with its own recipe card. Berries
and edible mushrooms are gathered in the wild; a poisonous or strange
mushroom will not go in the pot. A dish beyond your skill may burn, and
then everything that went into it is lost.
A dish from a card cooks in stages and needs watching. Now and then the
pot calls for your hand and you are told what to do, such as 'use stir
the pot' or 'use pull it off the heat': answer before the moment passes.
A missed moment makes the dish poorer and may burn it, however skilled
you are. Every dish you see through without a slip adds to your Cooking
mastery, shown in 'show masteries'. A practised cook has longer to answer
and now and then turns out a masterful dish, better made and longer
lasting. Rarely the flavours come together in a way you have never
tasted: catch that moment and you learn a good deal at once. Baking plain
rye bread needs no watching.
At a food hall hearth or an inn's kitchen fire, 'cook <name>' with a
card's exact name cooks a batch for the building's shelf instead of for
you. The settlement's stores are the pot: grain, meat and the like come
from them, and only what the stores do not keep, such as game meat, comes
from your pack. A better cook gets more servings from a batch. You must
be taken in by the settlement, each cook may cook here once in half an
hour, and the shelf must have room. A hall's shelf takes dishes, an inn's
shelf drinks. A cook whose skill is below the dish is turned away:
practise it from your pack first. You are paid in experience and standing
when you finish, and in coin when a serving sells.
Examples:
cook recipe stew - cook a stew from its card
cook stew - at a hall hearth, cook a stew for the shelf
read stew recipe - see what the stew takes
use stir the pot - answer the pot when it calls for it
See also: eat, drink, effects, camp, skin, show masteries, province food