Add cooking with wooden bowls

[Matti-patti]

There has been traditional usage of wooden containers for cooking in Finland, and this could theoretically go back to URW's times. I.e. särä: https://areena.yle.fi/1-50799207

In practice it would involve wooden bowl or similar new speciality item that would be patched a bit with quick dough and then placed in fireplace (which represents traditional Finnish chimneyless ovenstove) with burned out fire and cooked for hours, akin to meat stew and porridge recipes. The container should suffer wear in the process and be good for only few usages.

As pot is rather large investment early on, this would allow some basic cooking to be done by starting characters.

[Brygun]

BAC did add a "block pot" as a hollowed up tree stump stand in for a "pot". The idea being you add heated rocks to it.

Currently it mimics the ability of an iron pot. It would take a whole separate set of recipes to change the cook time or ability to the wooden block pot.

[Matti-patti]

That also sounds rather different than the traditional Finnish usage, which is closely tied to usage of heat retaining fireplaces for household heating.

In any case, I was listening some radio programmes on Finnish prehistory earlier, and it was said that if anything this was the main cooking method, with metal pots being small, low volume things for rich futurist hipsters of the day.

[Plotinus]

I have been imagining the game pots to be ceramic all this time. Is that ahistoric?

[Matti-patti]

No*, but I don't think it's supposed to be a ceramic pot. The game icon, it's price tag and especially the fact it's within the scope of metal items one can order from your local blacksmith suggest an iron pot.

On the other I'm not so sure on the importance of the oven's passive heating for cooking now. Another archaeologist said that when Finns switched to heat retaining fireplaces (sometime during the Viking age) there was switch to outdoor kitchens in kotas and similar.

*Apparently, iron age Finnish ceramic pots were fairly smallish generally, at about 1 litre (but up to 4), and were glazed with ferriferous clay or bog iron limonite.

[Brygun]

There really should be some way in game to boil water before the expense of an iron pot.

Glad to here of the little ceramic pot being Finn historic... "Finstoric" if you will.

BAC does add some non Finstoric things like a birchbark canoe popular with the indigenous here in North America. BAC's block pot came from watching some survival shows doing the hot rocks into a wood block and there is a small clay kettle I like my characters to carry. This little kettle seems close to the Finstoric ceramic pot mentioned. In game it is light enough for a traveler to carry to use to make medicine teas after an injury.

[Brygun]

Matti as Im updating BAC again do you have more details to share?

The weblink is in Finnish and though can translate Im finding it awkward to drill out the details.

[Plotinus]

I do think that for balance reasons, there should be a reason to buy the pot, which is expensive, it should give you access to some things you can't do with a cheap wooden bowl that anybody with an axe can make. Otherwise nobody will buy it.

[Plotinus]

Maybe pots could require cleaning and metal pots could be easier to clean than wood, the wood could rot if not cleaned quickly after use and have to be thrown out or it could be degrade in quality if left outside in the rain and sun and ice, eventually it might split or flake apart -- maybe over the course of a year? in real life i have some wooden stools on my balcony that are very decayed after decades of being outside but probably they originally had some kind of treatment, some laquer or something to preserve them against the elements. I'm imagining the bowl would be more fragile or you'd tolerate less decay before making a new one

No matter how much mould grows in a metal pot, you can get it clean enough to be safe with boiling water and scrubbing it until it shines again, but if you get mould growing on your wooden spoon then that's it, you throw it out.

[Matti-patti]

Matti as Im updating BAC again do you have more details to share?

The weblink is in Finnish and though can translate Im finding it awkward to drill out the details.

Going by the instructions from there for the modern day traditional dish from Lemi: https://www.maajakotitalousnaiset.fi/reseptit/lemin-sara-etela-karjalasta

The tub is carved from birch or aspen, and is sized to the oven. It's then soaked in salted water for "weeks", which is said to help prevent cracking (reminds me of the salted water treatment given to kuksa, traditional wooden mug). After this it's treated with sheep tallow.

For the dish itself, salted mutton or lamb (1kg salt for 10kg meat, so were are talking properly salted for preservation) is rinsed in water to remove excess salt. A heat retaining over is fired up. Any cracks on the tub are patched up with combination of water and flour. The meat is placed on the tub and placed in the oven, with few pieces of alder separating the tub from the bottom of the oven (this both protects the tub and imparts taste, alder being traditional smoking wood in Finland, I guess just branches would be closest URW equivalent). It's cooked in the oven for hours (as many as 8), with meat flipped halfway through the cooking and potatoes turnips added sometime during the latter half of it. Apparently the tub can handle about 40-60 uses, more than I thought.

Note that this is a "dry" dish, even if the meat naturally releases liquid to the bottom of the tub. I suppose we can assume the tub can handle the in-game stew type dishes as those contain minimum water, but no idea how it would hold up with a soup.

@Plotinus I suppose one could take a stance that the iron pot shouldn't even exist in the game, it's a very complicated thing to hammer that kind of thing together from wrought iron. I'm not too sure it would be easier to take care of such pot in real life. Taking that kuksa as example, it's arguably easier to take care of than modern carbon steel cookware is (wood is somewhat hygienic material naturally, as it tends to absorb moisture from the surface and bacteria don't like being dehydrated).

[Brygun]

Basically a slow cooker on low heat so you don't burn the wood "pan".

This looks doable.

I'd use *tub instead of pot.
fire needed
branches for the elevation and extra heat
a brief active time
long wait for it time

meat mandatory
optional turnips (instead of potatoes)
optional herbs

One thing not doable is the mid cooking flip step. Cooking is a work at then wait system.

[JP_Finn]

Basically a slow cooker on low heat so you don't burn the wood "pan".

This looks doable.

I'd use *tub instead of pot.
fire needed
branches for the elevation and extra heat
a brief active time
long wait for it time

meat mandatory
optional turnips (instead of potatoes)
optional herbs

One thing not doable is the mid cooking flip step. Cooking is a work at then wait system.

If using tub, then both [boil] and [bake] are out. [roast] with {[nearby_tile:Fireplace]} works. Downside is that the tub isn’t filled with the food, and can be picked up after active portion of the recipe is done, before the dish is ready for picking up.


The prep time doesn’t need to be long, but requiring brined/cured meat as the ingredient would be more realistic. You can utilize the brining recipe from my hotsmoking mod and avoid duplicating work.

[Brygun]

Voila!
Eureka!

Ill worked this up and tested it. Will be adding to BAC shortly. Meanwhile if you want to use it separately:

Try this:

add to your menudef

.Tub cooking. -T- *COOKERY*

and stick into cookery_glossary

[SUBMENU_START:Tub cooking]

//Tub Cooking
//
// by Brygun
// added 2023-12-07
//
// Inspired by conversations stared by Matti-patti at
// https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=7171.0
//
// Sample real world recipe
// https://www.maajakotitalousnaiset.fi/reseptit/lemin-sara-etela-karjalasta
// Cook time based on average of young lamb 180m and old shepp
// at half that. Thus 150m.
// For this game a stone is used to elevate the tub out of the fire
//
// The result from bottom to top is the fire lay, the stone,
// tub on the stone
// in the tub the turnips on the bottom
// meat on top of the turnips
// thus meat juices drip onto turnips
//
// sounds tasty so a good skill bonus given
//
// Allowed patch based on capacity of the tub at 10
// herbs and seasoning allowance for stacking a little higher
// than what liquids the tub could hold


.Lemi sra. *COOKERY* /10/  \150\ %30% [effort:1] [patch:5]
{Fire} '+ Heat source started'
{Firewood} (3) [remove] [ground] [noquality]'+ to sustain fire'
{*tub*} [ground] '+ to hold food near heat'
{Stone} [ground] '+ to raise tub from fire'
{Raw meat}   #1#    [remove] [ground] [roast] [patchwise] [name] '+ cooked in tub near fire'
{Turnip} #1# [remove] [roast] [patchwise] '+ cooked in tub near fire'
{Herbs}   #.5#   [remove] [roast] [optional] [patchwise]
{Seasoning}   #0.25#   [remove] [roast] [optional] [patchwise]
{Knife}   '+for preparing'
[COOK_WEIGHT_DIV:1.5]
[TILEGFX:org-meatcut]



[SUBMENU_END:Tub cooking]

[Brygun]

The prep time doesn’t need to be long, but requiring brined/cured meat as the ingredient would be more realistic. You can utilize the brining recipe from my hotsmoking mod and avoid duplicating work.

Was testing/prepping when you posted.

The above I tested work. Its not quite the same as using an oven. Its meant to access to a combined roasting of meat, turnips and leaves. Without an oven the player could roast the meat and turnips. This just does it as a combination with a quality bonus.

>>>

As for using brined meats:

I read the example recipe as more about debrining the meat after it had been salt perserved.

However...

maybe a separate recipe could be made where brined meat is used.


>>>

As this was placed into a cookery submenu there is plenty of menu space. currently its just the one recipe.

[Brygun]

BAC update with Lemi Sra went live.

Includes raw meat and brine meat versions.