Cooking

Randy Feltface: [rhetorically] How hard is it to make eggplant moussaka!?

Sammy J: [suddenly serious] --It's quite hard.

Randy Feltface: Exceptionally difficult.

Defaults: IQ-5 or Housekeeping-5

Cooking (IQ/Average) is the skill of being a chef, and cooking complex meals. It is not needed to heat water and open boxes, or to cook meat over your campfire, but it can be remarkably good at raising spirits and bringing people together. And it's good to avoid food poisoning--both in preparation and in pre-tasting the meal!

Specialization

Many chefs have an optional specialty in a particular type of food (e.g. baking, beverage making, candy) or a particular variety of ethnic cuisine (e.g. Chinese, French, Italian... Martian).

Modifiers

• There may be a penalty to Cooking when making food for much larger (or much smaller) sapient creatures.

Fanon: Immense Skill

As a Fanon-optional rule, characters with a skill at 16+ may end up being able to cook dishes without the proper ingredients; or might be able to use Cooking to produce basic Alchemy ingredients.

Equipment

• Group Basics, for Survival and Cooking, are $50 and 20 lbs. Good for preparing your rations, or some dire animal meats.
• A proper ship galley, such as on a modern sea vessel or ultra-tech spaceship can even give an equipment modifier of +2. At minimum it should count as the basic materials for cooking!
  • Malfunctions of a ship's galley can cause food poisoning...
• See the Cooking Gear section of High-Tech, p.57

NPCs with Cooking

Outside of professional chefs, most NPCs with cooking will have it as a backup for their day job. Courtesans, Tribal Wanderers, spacers like Belters and Explorers. Some types of magic (creating enchanted consumables) may require Cooking at a very high level.

See Also

• Skills
  • For basic cooking, you can always use Housekeeping!
  • For very rudimentary cooking, you can use Survival!
  • For simply getting edible (and inedible) parts off of monsters, see Dungeon Butcher
    • Most dungeon adventure cooks should probably just use Professional Skill (Dungeon Butcher) instead!
• Talents
  • The Goodwife talent includes Cooking, as well as other house-and-home skills.
  • The Servant! wildcard skill includes Cooking, and just about anything else a crimefighter might need from a loyal butler.
• Food Poisoning
  • Salmonella? (to be added)