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40d:Kitchen

From Dwarf Fortress Wiki
Revision as of 11:26, 17 May 2009 by Jpwrunyan (talk | contribs) (Explained the problems with preparing large stacks of lavish meals)
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Kitchen

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Job Requirement

Cooking

Construction
Materials Jobs

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Materials Used
Goods Created

A Kitchen is a workshop used by a cook. The cook uses this workshop primarily to combine base ingredients (meat, plump helmets, etc.) into prepared food. It is also used to render fat into tallow.

Prepared meals

On the Kitchen submenu of the Overall Status screen (z), you can specify which foods the kitchen is allowed to cook (and also which plants the still is allowed to brew). Blue means "cook this food"; red means "do not cook".

There are three grades of meals you can prepare at a kitchen:

  • Easy (biscuit) requires two cookable items.
  • Fine (stew) requires three cookable items.
  • Lavish (roast) requires four cookable items.

The items to be cooked do not have to be different: for instance, a cook might combine two plump helmet spawn into a stack of two "plump helmet spawn biscuits", or four spawn into four "plump helmet spawn roasts". The amount of food produced always equals the total number of food items used.

If large stacks of food are used as the ingredients, a large stack of meals will be produced. For example, 22 "Minced cave fish roasts" could be created from "minced cave fish [5], minced turtle, minced dwarven wine [14], and minced turtle [2]".

Prepared meals do not produce any byproducts such as seeds, shells, or bones when cooked or eaten. This makes them ideal for placement in dining rooms located far away from your main population because food and refuse haulers will not have to trek long distances to retrieve the seeds or bones left after a meal, and a single enormous meal stack can feed several dwarves for a year or more.

Drawbacks of Prepared Meals

The major drawback of prepared meals is that if they are not stored properly they can quickly rot, effectively rendering their preparation a waste of time. Currently, prepared food of stacks 10 or less can be stored in a barrel insuring their long-lasting preservation. Stacks greater than 10 cannot be stored in barrels. Often these large, lavish meals are left in the kitchen where vermin quickly bring about contamination and spoil. Care must be taken to insure larger meals do not putresce in this manner. This is further complicated by the fact that there is no way to set a food stockpile exclusively for prepared meals--you may only set your stockpiles to include/exclude them.

Value of a prepared meal

Regardless of the type of meal you produce, a stack of prepared meals has a base value of 10 for each meal in the stack, multiplied by the quality rating of the preparation quality. However, the final value of a stack of meals is highly variable because it is so strongly influenced by the quality of the ingredients and the size of the ingredient stacks. The quality designator shown is not taken from the preparation results, but from the best quality of any one ingredient. The value added by the preparation can be a small fraction of the total value of the meal when expensive or exceptionally-prepared ingredients go into the meal. Meat from animals with high MODVALUE, processed plants that generate large stacks, or luxury food items like cheese are all ingredients that can cause a stack of prepared meals to have a surprisingly high value.

Some examples:

≡Dwarven wheat flour roast [33]≡

This is a stack of 33 well-prepared Dwarven wheat flour roast. The ingredients are exceptionally minced Plump helmet, well-minced deer meat, superiorly minced Quarry bush Leaves and minced Dwarven wheat flour.

Total value: 3102☼

10 (prepared meal) * 3 (well) == 30
2 (plant) * 2 (plump helmet) * 5 (exceptional) == 20
2 (meat) * 1 (deer) * 2 (well-made) == 4
5 (quarry bush leaves) * 4 (superior) == 20
20 (dwarven wheat flour) * 1 (no label) == 20
Subtotal (value of one serving): 94☼

94 (value) * 33 (quantity) == 3102☼

*Dragon meat stew [41]*

This is a stack of 41 well-prepared dragon meat stew. The ingredients are finely-minced Dwarven syrup, minced quarry bush leaves and well-minced dragon meat.

Total value: 11685☼

10 (prepared meal)* 2 (well) == 20
20 (dwarven syrup) * 3 (fine) == 60
5 (quarry bush leaves) * 1 (no label) == 5
2 (meat) * 50 (dragon) * 2 (well) == 200
Subtotal (value of one serving): 285☼

285 (value) * 41 (quantity) == 11685☼

See also

Workshops
Furnaces
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