Cooking Guide

Cooking is a great production skill that can be useful for players of any class. You can make extra money by converting raw materials to finished products for better profits. You can make useful items to restore vigour and fatigue, essentially for long voyages, sea battles and land exploration. Items made maybe for your own use, share with friends or sold to other players. For players with fishing skill, it helps making good use of the catches.

Getting Started
Portugal and The Netherlands have the most abundant cooking resources, giving cooks from these countries an advantage since they are able to buy greater quantities of materials at lower prices in their home countries. However, there are many options in cooking, so it is still very accessible to players from any country.

Skills

 * Cooking
 * Livestock Trading - requires Food Trading at rank 3
 * Accounts (recommended)

Jobs
Animal Trader is the only job which favors all of these skills and is therefore the ideal class for beginning your cooking career. To become an Animal Trader, use a Merchant Guild Card at any Merchant GM to change jobs. If you do not have a Merchant Guild Card, you can obtain one from The Merchant Guild's Predicament quest, available randomly from Merchant Mediators in the major cities once you have reached 500 trade fame. It is possible to cook under any job as long as you can obtain the cooking skill, however, it will be more difficult to advance your cooking skill without support from the Livestock and Food Trading skills. See the individual skill pages for info on other jobs that favor them and requirements for getting the skills when not favored.

Recipe books
In addition to the Cooking skill, recipe books are required in order to cook. Which books you use will depend partly on your home country and personal preference, though everyone can start with the Simple recipes book, which can be purchased in Palma or Bordeaux or acquired for free from "the city's first epicurean" quest. Some books can only be found in certain cities, and rarer books require significant investment in a city before they become available. More info about recipe books can be found in the relevant sections below.

Go to the local Merchant Guild mediator and look for a quest on gathering eggs.

Eggs can be bought from : Calvi, Faro, Trieste, Ragusa, and Den Helder

Reward: Rank 1 cooking book

Extra Information: To get rank 2 cooking, buy wheat and "Mill" into Flour. Then you can buy rank 2 cooking books in no time.

Recipes

 * Simple recipes (Palma, Bordeaux, the city's first epicurean) 5000 D
 * Livestock secrets - Pigs (Porto) 5000 D
 * Livestock secrets - Sheep (optional, Amsterdam) 8000 D
 * Makeable Meats (optional, Genoa) 10000 D

Levels 1 - 2
Purchase Simple recipes from Palma or Bordeaux for 5,000 D. Optionally, if you find the city's first epicurean quest at the Merchant Guild you can obtain the book for free. Portuguese players can buy wheat from Porto, and Spanish can buy wheat from Seville, though it may be worthwhile to sail between the two since they are close. Dutch can buy wheat at Antwerp and Lubeck. Mill the wheat into flour and sell it. Of note, flour seems to hold a pretty constant price no matter where you go, which is nice. Spanish players can also make biscuits with Confectionary For Beginners bought in Amsterdan. Between Porto and Gijon, Porto has wheat and Gijon ducks to turn into eggs.

Level 3
Purchase Livestock secrets - Pigs from Porto for 5,000 D. Pigs are available in Faro and Gijon. Pork is available in Porto. Lard makes quite a profit, especially for Portuguese players.

Level 4
Buy pigs as before. You can now make pork into bacon, but it's worth considering sticking with lard because you can produce up to 3 barrels of lard per barrel of pork, compared to only 2 for bacon.

Level 5 - 6
Buy pigs as before. You can now make either Ham or Sausages. Check the rates at the markets closest to you and make note of the prices and which cities are already selling Ham or Sausage, since that halves your selling price. Spanish players can do the Porto-Gijon route to make Ham and Cheese Saute from simple recipes. Porto sells cheese, lard and pork and Gijon sells pigs and ducks.

Level 7 - 10
(optional)

If you're tired of butchering pigs or want something else to supplement, you can try your hand at Roast Lamb using the Makeable Meats book from Genoa. See details in the North Sea Cook section below.

Recipes

 * Simple recipes (Palma, Bordeaux, the city's first epicurean) 5000 D
 * Livestock secrets - Sheep (Amsterdam) 8000D
 * Livestock secrets - Cattle (Nantes) 8000D
 * Makeable Meats (Genoa) 10000D
 * North sea cuisine collection (Amsterdam, London, reward after 1,000,000D in investment)

Level 1
Purchase Simple recipes from Palma or Bordeaux for 5,000 D. Optionally, if you find the city's first epicurean quest at the Merchant Guild you can obtain the book for free. Buy wheat from Antwerp.

Level 2
Purchase Livestock secrets - Cattle from Nantes and Livestock secrets - Sheep from Amsterdam. Dutch can buy sheep from Den Helder, English can buy cattle and sheep in Edinburg, and French can buy cattle in Calais. Make milk from your livestock using the appropriate book. Buy salt from Den Helder. Combine milk and salt to make butter.

Level 3 - 4
Buy sheep or cattle as before, then make them into lamb or beef.

Level 5 - 6
Buy sheep from Den Helder or Edinburg. Butcher the sheep into lamb, then make the lamb into sausage. If you were using cattle and beef exclusively before, it may be worth switching to sheep so you can train your cooking skill twice. If you are English, you can make both sausages and beef in Edinburg to train your skill more quickly.

Level 7 - 10
Buy Makeable Meats from Genoa which allows you to make Roast Lamb. You have two options.

You can buy sheep and salt in Den Helder, turn some of your sheep into butter, the rest into lamb, then make roast lamb. However, salt will be the limiting factor here, so you may want the Seasoning Trading skill.

You can buy sheep and salt in Den Helder, butcher all the sheep into lamb, travel to London, buy Butter, and combine all three ingredients to make Roast Lamb. This option will allow you to trade between Den Helder and London and potentially earn some side profit.

Roast Lamb can be sold to the Item Shop or other players.