User:Arame/Cooking

Masterpieces:

Find stuff that you have hundreds of. Camel Meat, Honey, Mutton, all that Coconut Meat you created while you were getting your salt. Ideally, these are things that you can generate with low effort, so vegetables are ~kind of on the list this tale, kind of off. (I grew hundreds of each ahead of time, but painful to do - offlining helps a bit).

Find pairings for these - one to three herbs that are ~close by these on the grid, and that you possess (that's important). Doesn't have to be too close, although I prefer closer. Bortox used to chide me for that - the important thing is that they match to each other, and don't get eaten by a different base.

Now, mix and match them. Over and over and over again. I'm using cooking 4 right now, so I start with 3 "common pairs", and cycle the fourth pair through. You won't be able to use the pairings, because of interference (for instance, Dates and Honey are too close to one another to reliably combine - so use one or the other). When you hit your first masterpiece, remember the pairing you just added - and add that to your next "common pairing"

Real example - here's how I got the MPs rolling:

Pairings

Base	Match1	Match2	Match3
Camel Meat	Cinnamon	Meadowsweet
Coconut Meat	Cardamom	C Rosemary
Dates	Thyme	Bucklerleaf
Honey	Thyme	Bucklerleaf
Mutton	Myristica	Xanosi	Indigo Damia
Oil	Crampbark	Gynura
Oyster	Covage	Glechoma
Royal Jelly	Lemondrop	Crimson Lettuce	Pale Dhamasa
Onions	Fool's Agar	Blue Damia
Carrots	Lemondrop	Crimson Lettuce	Pale Dhamasa
Cabbage Juice	Covage
Grilled Fish	Myristica
Carrot Juice	Wild Lettuce

Now mix 'em:

Pair1	Pair2	Pair3	Pair4
Camel+Cinnamon	Dates+Thyme	Mutton+Myrstica	Oyster+Covage
Camel+Cinnamon	Dates+Thyme	Mutton+Myrstica	Oil+Crambark
Camel+Cinnamon	Dates+Thyme	Mutton+Myrstica	Royal+Lemondrop
Camel+Cinnamon	Dates+Thyme	Mutton+Myrstica	Onions+FoolsAgar
Camel+Cinnamon	Dates+Thyme	Mutton+Myrstica	Carrots+Lemondrop

Woah - that last one was an MP. OK, so likely that Carrots + Lemondrop is one of my special friends. Let's change the common pairings.

Pair1	Pair2	Pair3	Pair4
Carrots+Lemondrop	Honey+Bucklerleaf	Oyster+Covage	Oil+Crampbark
Carrots+Lemondrop	Honey+Bucklerleaf	Oyster+Covage	Camel+Cinnamon
Carrots+Lemondrop	Honey+Bucklerleaf	Oyster+Covage	Onions+FoolsAgar
Carrots+Lemondrop	Honey+Bucklerleaf	Oyster+Covage	Coconut+Cardamom
Carrots+Lemondrop	Honey+Bucklerleaf	Oyster+Covage	Mutton+Myristica

Four of those five were MPs. Basically, you're just slapping as many pairings together as you can, and when you find one that works, keep it and run with it. I added the last three pairings above just to give me more options with this same core set of (Carrots/Honey/Oyster/<something else>).