Juice, Wine/Mead/Ale, and Milk in Meals

[LexicalAnomaly]

Hello, first time posting here, apologies if there's already a thread on this, I couldn't find one!

My suggestion is to allow the use of juice, wine/mead/ale, and milk in certain meal recipes that call for either fruit or liquid. For example, you could use fruit juice in place of berries in a meat stew (perhaps 0.1 or 0.2l per serving), or you could use wine or milk in place of the water (1L per serving, like water) in soups. This would make it easier to put fruit, grain, or dairy nutrition into your diet, would make soup give more satiation overall, and would add more use to preserving fruits as juice or wine. Using ale as an ingredient would allow you to add grain nutrition to meals that otherwise couldn't have them instead of fruit. Cooking alcoholic beverages would remove most of its alcohol content, much like in real life, but could leave a small amount.

An additional suggestion would be to allow for the cooking of alcoholic beverages, to reduce their alcohol content before drinking. This would make them useful as a long term food without impairing you when consumed. 

Also, you should be able to use mushrooms as the vegetable in pies. 

Edited July 28, 2025 by LexicalAnomaly

[Lugh Crow-Slave]

Check out expanded foods and culinary artillery. Pretty much everything you asked for is in there. 

I'm on the fence about adding too much more to cooking base game just because of how little impact the system has meaning any effort put into a system for more complex foods will likely be ignored by most players who just use readmeat stew 99% of the time. 

[Echo Weaver]

I really like the idea of cooking with wine/mead/ale. In addition, grains should be allowed in meals. It really bugs me that I can't make chicken and rice. Also, cheese in porridge. I come from the land of cheese grits, for heaven's sake. These recipes are straightforward to mod, but I am still learning how. I've searched for grains in meals and not found it, which surprises me.

I've been reluctant to mess with Expanded Foods and A Culinary Artilery because it adds SO MUCH. Most of what I want to see can me managed by reducing restrictions on the existing foods. Maybe I'll eventually try.

[LexicalAnomaly]

1 hour ago, Lugh Crow-Slave said:

Check out expanded foods and culinary artillery. Pretty much everything you asked for is in there. 

Thanks for the suggestion, but these mods seem a little overcomplicated compared to what I'm asking for. I wouldn't say no to some more cooking options but I figured my suggestion was more in line with what's in the current vanilla game. 

[Facethief]

2 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

I really like the idea of cooking with wine/mead/ale. In addition, grains should be allowed in meals. It really bugs me that I can't make chicken and rice. Also, cheese in porridge. I come from the land of cheese grits, for heaven's sake.

Note to self- don’t read this thread while hungry.

[Echo Weaver]

2 hours ago, LexicalAnomaly said:

Thanks for the suggestion, but these mods seem a little overcomplicated compared to what I'm asking for. I wouldn't say no to some more cooking options but I figured my suggestion was more in line with what's in the current vanilla game. 

Heh. I think there's a whole class of mods out there that follow the philosophy, "This mechanic could use about 5 more options, so I added 40!" (I also feel like this about the Wildcraft series.)

To be fair, Expanded Foods looks like a ton of fun if you want to skew your game toward a cooking sim, which is totally legitimate in a sandbox game. I have played on a couple of multiplayer servers with one or two dedicated cooks, and it's definitely fun there. But feels like way to much for me for my personal game.

[Lugh Crow-Slave]

5 hours ago, LexicalAnomaly said:

Thanks for the suggestion, but these mods seem a little overcomplicated compared to what I'm asking for. I wouldn't say no to some more cooking options but I figured my suggestion was more in line with what's in the current vanilla game. 

Not really all expanded foods does is add more cooking resepies and allows the finished food to take values from ingredients. 

Culinary artillery just adds a couple new items you can cook in that function the same but with different scales. And new liquid containers. 

[Facethief]

15 hours ago, Lugh Crow-Slave said:

Not really all expanded foods does is add more cooking resepies and allows the finished food to take values from ingredients. 

Culinary artillery just adds a couple new items you can cook in that function the same but with different scales. And new liquid containers. 

…Sure, man.

[Lugh Crow-Slave]

4 hours ago, Facethief said:

…Sure, man.

Lol why would I lie? 

[Thorfinn]

The only part of that which is at all tricky, @LexicalAnomaly, is the artwork. Some you could probably get by without. Juice instead of fruit, or booze as optional ingredient, you just don't use a texture for that ingredient. I don't know, but I'd guess that's not a fatal error. Might throw a warning, though. But things like mushroom pie, you need to create artwork for what the various mushrooms look like as pie filling.

Edited July 29, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Krougal]

Personally, I enjoy cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[LexicalAnomaly]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

The only part of that which is at all tricky, @LexicalAnomaly, is the artwork. Some you could probably get by without. Juice instead of fruit, or booze as optional ingredient, you just don't use a texture for that ingredient. I don't know, but I'd guess that's not a fatal error. Might throw a warning, though. But things like mushroom pie, you need to create artwork for what the various mushrooms look like as pie filling.

I don't think it would be too tricky.

For mushroom pies, the texture would just be colors from the mushroom in question. If you mix them, they could just become a generic brown mushroom color, similar to how the current pies have a generic mixed meat/fruit/vegetable texture when using multiple types of ingredients. (See image) 

For stew, you probably don't need to change anything. For porridge, you could tint the grain base's color based on the juice used, or just leave it as is. For soups, you could change the color of the broth to match the liquid ingredient used, instead of the current generic yellowish vegetable broth color. Milk would give you a white and more opaque liquid, blueberry wine would make the broth transparent blue, etc. 

[Thorfinn]

It would be easy enough if there is an existing pie texture that works, true. Is there one? Or would you have to make one? (Note: I did not ask if I would have to make one.)

[Echo Weaver]

The textures are indistinct enough that even I could make some if they were needed. I don't art, but I do Photoshop .

Actually, a mushroom pie filling texture is already in the game. 5 shades, in fact: black, blue (bluish-gray), brown, orange, and red.

I have no idea what, if anything they're used for.

There are also fill-cheddar.png, fill-bluecheese.png, and fill-mixedcheese.png that could be used for cheese pie, which I've always wanted to make. 

Also fill-aubergine.png and fill-potato.png? Guess we have a bit of a roadmap for which foods they're considering adding.

That's just in pies. Meals have tomato, potato, and aubergine textures. Tomato looks like it would be fine for red wine. Cranberry is in here too. Plenty of golden-shaded stuff for mead or white wine.

ETA: I guess fruit colors are more important than red and white wine, lol. I'm just starting to look at wine making, so I don't have a lot of personal experience yet. 

Edited July 29, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

Guess we have a bit of a roadmap for which foods they're considering adding.

True, dat.

If I get a chance this evening, I'll look at it, but all you should have to do is add to the attributes for the red wine cap:

			inPieProperties: { texture: "block/food/pie/fill-mushroomTextureRed", partType: 'Filling' },
			groundStorageTransform: {
				translation: { x: -0.3, y: -0.45, z: 0.2 },
				rotation: { x: 0, y: 33, z: 90 }

BTW, I have no idea what the texture for red wine caps is called. I just made up something. Might have to diddle with the translation and rotation a bit. Depends on what those textures look like. If they were intended for pies, I'd guess they will work as is.

[Echo Weaver]

13 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

True, dat.

If I get a chance this evening, I'll look at it, but all you should have to do is add to the attributes for the red wine cap:

I was looking at the code defining meals, and it's pretty straightforward too

. Now that I know what my texture options are, I could take a stab at it. 

Changes I was thinking for meals:

 - Optional cheese in porridge. Also, optional milk. I like the liquid added in Porridge with Milk, but I'm not sure I want to give up 2-grain porridge.

 - Soup liquid can be water, milk, or wine/mead/ale (aka booze). 

 - Soup and stews have optional grain

20 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

BTW, I have no idea what the texture for red wine caps is called. I just made up something. Might have to diddle with the translation and rotation a bit. Depends on what those textures look like. If they were intended for pies, I'd guess they will work as is.

Since I'm staring at it, it's fill-mushroom(black/blue/brown/orange/red).png

 

[Thorfinn]

If you feel like it, you can go ahead and add the fugazy, or whatever that suggestions was a couple weeks ago. Grain, egg, milk, fruit, I think?

[LexicalAnomaly]

4 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

Actually, a mushroom pie filling texture is already in the game. 5 shades, in fact: black, blue (bluish-gray), brown, orange, and red.

I have no idea what, if anything they're used for.

There are also fill-cheddar.png, fill-bluecheese.png, and fill-mixedcheese.png that could be used for cheese pie, which I've always wanted to make. 

Wow, that's good to know that the textures are already in the game files. Looks like there's also one for cottage cheese , fish , and bushmeat  too! 

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

I could take a stab at it. 

That would be amazing, I wasn't expecting anyone to try and make this when I posted it. 

Edited July 30, 2025 by LexicalAnomaly

[Thorfinn]

Dopey me. I looked at that like 100 times and didn't see the closing bracket to the pie attribute, so I went to the next closing bracket.. You need only the first line

inPieProperties: { texture: "block/food/pie/fill-mushroomred", partType: 'Filling' },

It goes in .\assets\survival\blocketypes\plant\mushroom.json and mushroom-side.json. It wasn't until I went to paste it in and Notepad++ noticed the mismatched braces.

Small concern. There must be some reason they had all the assets prepared and took it back out.

Edited July 30, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Echo Weaver]

13 minutes ago, LexicalAnomaly said:

Wow, that's good to know that the textures are already in the game files. Looks like there's also one for cottage cheese , fish , and bushmeat  too! 

That would be amazing, I wasn't expecting anyone to try and make this when I posted it. 

Yeah! 

Bushmeat pie? I hadn't even noticed that one. 

My teen was complaining that she can't make fish pie. I downloaded a recipe for egg pie, but I really want cheese pie too, and I'd totally forgotten about blue cheese because I don't bother with that . Maybe if blue cheese gave a bit of vegetable nutrition, it would be worth it (since we've decided fungus is a vegetable).

Someone made a mushroom pie recipe, though the text never worked. It sounds like you could get infinitely complicated with that one, including special textures for single-mushroom pies. That seems like a lot. Heh. Mushroom brown certainly sounds good to me.

This is all XML stuff and seems to be designed straightforwardly, but I'm not clear that I know all the places XML files need to be patched. So it may go pear shaped.

[LexicalAnomaly]

10 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Small concern. There must be some reason they had all the assets prepared and took it back out.

The biggest issue I could see is that they couldn't figure out how to make poison mushrooms work in mixed pies and decided to axe it for the time being. Easiest workaround for that for a little mod would be to just not allow the poisonous ones in pies. 

[Echo Weaver]

12 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Dopey me. I looked at that like 100 times and didn't see the closing bracket to the pie attribute, so I went to the next closing bracket.. You need only the first line

inPieProperties: { texture: "block/food/pie/fill-mushroomred", partType: 'Filling' },

It goes in .\assets\survival\blocketypes\plant\mushroom.json and mushroom-side.json. It wasn't until I went to paste it in and Notepad++ noticed the mismatched braces.

Oh, whew. I though I might need to handle something involving different model states in order to add a pie. 

13 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Small concern. There must be some reason they had all the assets prepared and took it back out.

Considering how many textures I'm seeing in here for stuff we know they haven't implemented, I think they may add assets for something they plan to do later anyway. It may never have been actually put in the game.

One possible issue is that there are over a dozen mushroom varieties, I think, and some are poisonous. There are meal textures for poisonous mushrooms hanging out in the assets. That's an interesting choice. So it might be too big of a pain to calculate nutrition for a mixed-mushroom pie. 

[LexicalAnomaly]

2 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

So it might be too big of a pain to calculate nutrition for a mixed-mushroom pie.

Mushrooms all have the same nutrition value, it's just the poison levels that can vary.

[Echo Weaver]

44 minutes ago, LexicalAnomaly said:

Mushrooms all have the same nutrition value, it's just the poison levels that can vary.

Oh, I didn't realize that. I saw a chart on the effects of mushrooms and apparently got dazzled by all the numbers 

[DukeLeto42]

At the risk of making everyone here hate me for horrid food ideas...

The Norse used milk in place of far too many things. The reason mead is all throughout Norse mythology is not because everyone drank it, but because it was way better than the everyday booze of fermented milk. Oh, and did you know you can pickle food with milk? Now you do, sorry about that.