I've recently decided to create a series of plugins that are all food-related. I'm planning to call it The Traveller's Guide to Dining and make one plugin for each of the ~29 taverns and inns on Vvardenfell plus, eventually, a traveller's guide that describes them all. After researching the flora and fauna (mostly on UESP Wiki) I came up with a reference for culinary practices that I can use when creating menus and new foods and drinks. Since there are so many eateries, I need to be able to create a good variety of menus.

Here's what I have so far:

Tasty Food

bread ... crab meat ... hackle-lo leaf ... hound meat ... kwama egg ... marshmerrow ... saltrice ... scuttle

Good Food

ampoule pod ... ash yam ... bittergreen petals ... corkbulb root ... fire petal ... green lichen ... heather ... kresh fiber ... ~kwama cuttle ( New idea: for candy and gum) ... luminous russula ... scrib jelly ... scrib jerky ... stoneflower petals ... trama root ... violet coprinus ... void salts (condiment) ... wickwheat

OK as Food if Properly Cooked

black anther ... black lichen ... bloat ... chokeweed ... comberry ... fire salts ... frost salts ... muck ... rat meat ... red lichen ... roobrush ... scales ... scathecraw ... willow anther

(New idea) Other Foods

Cliff Racer meat ... Guar meat ... Kagouti meat ... Kollop meat ... Kwama meat ... Netch meat (Tentacles) ... Shalk meat ... Slaughterfish meat

The skin or rind of cliff racer, guar, kagouti, kwama, as well as other body parts.

Eaten by Certain Peoples

moon sugar (Khajiit) ... (powdered) emerald (Mages)

(New idea) Flour can be made from these Ingredients

ash yam ... corkbulb root ... heather ... kreshweed ... saltrice ... trama root ... wickwheat

(New idea) Nectar for Sauce, Wine, and Honey can be made from these Ingredients

black anther ... comberry ... fire petal ... gold kanet ... heather ... kreshweed flower ... stoneflower ... willow flower

Coda flower used to make a drug called Levilla.

(New idea) Herbs and Spices created by CrazyGreggy

Marjoram - Willow Anther leaves
Oregano - Black Anther leaves
Peppermint - Black Lichen
Spearmint - Green Lichen
Thyme - Roobush leaves
Sage - Kresh flower petals
Rosemary - Chokeweed twigs
Bay - Comberry leaves

Ginger - Kresh roots
Nutmeg - Rind of fruit of the Trama shrub
Cloves - Dried Comberry buds
Cinnamon - The inner bark of the Comberry shrub
Allspice - Dried Comberry berries
Cumin - Black Anther seeds
Coriander - Willow Anther seeds
Saffron - Stoneflower stigma
Licorice - Comberry roots
Mustard - Golden Kanet seeds

Non-Alcoholic Drinks

Trama root tea (UESP Wiki)
Comberry juice
Nectar juice drinks (50% water, 20% comberry juice, 30% nectar)
Marshmerrow milk
Saltrice milk

Alcohols Made From Fermenting

comberry ... wine and brandy
saltrice ... beer
scathecraw ... alcohol (New idea)

Liquors, Beers, and Other Alcoholic Drinks

Ancient Dagoth Brandy .. brandy .................................. -intelligence -willpower
Cyrodiilic Brandy ........... imported Imperial brandy .......... +endurance +willpower
Flin ............................ imported Imperial whiskey ........ +strength +willpower
Greef ......................... comberry brandy ...................... +strength -agility
Mazte ........................ fermented saltrice ................... +strength -intelligence -willpower
Nord Mead .................. sweet alcohol made with honey .. +strength -agility
Scraw (New idea) ......... scathecraw liquor .................... +willpower +intelligence +health -strength (Aimed at magic users)
Shein ......................... comberry wine ........................ +endurance -intelligence
Sujamma ..................... local Dunmer liquor .................. +strength -intelligence
Vintage Brandy ............. very rare brandy ...................... +strength -agility

* I've found no info on how Sujamma is made, but after talking to Stuporstar about it we've decided to make it a whiskey made from wickwheat.

New Wines

Black Anther Wine ... Resist Fire ... Drain Endurance
Fire Petal Wine ... Spell Absorption ... Drain Health
Heather Wine ... Feather ... Drain Speed
Sparkling Comberry Wine ... Restore Magicka ... Drain Fatigue
Sparkling Kresh Wine ... Restore Luck ... Drain Magicka
Sparkling Stoneflower Wine ... Restore Strength ... Drain Luck
Sparkling Willow Wine ... Frost Shield ... Drain Personality
Telvanni Mushroom Wine ... Fortify Speed ... Drain Willpower

Notes from UESP Wiki

Cheese is made from scuttle.
Native Dunmer love scrib jelly and scuttle.
Slaughterfish scales are a crunchy treat (but an acquired taste).
Muck must be prepared in the native manner.

New Ideas:

Scuttle oil, butter, lard, yogurt.
Guar oil, lard.

I'm soliciting for comments, suggestions, and opinions. If you see anything incorrect or missing, please let me know. Thanks!

EDITs on 04/30/2010 (strike-throughs and new wine info)
EDITs on 05/02/2010 (strike-throughs and new ideas on oil, butter, etc.)
EDIT on 05/04/2010 (in Non-Alcoholic Drinks section)
EDIT on 05/05/2010 (added marshmerrow milk)
EDIT on 05/09/2010 (Removed strike-throughs and cleaned up)
EDIT on 07/20/2010 (Added saltrice milk; changed comment about sujamma; made some changes to the wines)
EDIT on 07/25/2010 (Added herbs and spices by CrazyGreggy)

Great ideas! Nothing like some Daedra hearts w/ chokeweed though.

Hi Debi . I'm amazed at the selection you've come up with here . Well done ! Though I must point out that Emerald is a little too hard and inedible to be included . What about the other " salts " as condiments ? Vvardenfell chilli = fire salts . Many of the new idea "meats " have been added in to the game through mods like Tamriel Rebuilt , Creatures X and Morrowind Crafting so check them out ( I love the idea of Kollop meat - shellfish for Morrowind ! Yay !! )

CrazyGreggy -

Emerald removed from edible list. (Though I'll still consider whether some crazy Telvannis might swallow them for fortify magicka. )

I like the idea of chili = fire salts!

Maybe frost salts + netch milk could be used to make ice cream.

I'll check out the mods you mentioned.

Thanks!

This is impressive! :goodjob:

When you said you were working on something, I had hopes and looks like I was right. Should be fun to keep an eye on this one.

That said, I have to disagree with emeralds and coda flowers. Like a poster above me said, it would be much too hard. As for the coda flower, if you look through the charts again in depth you'll realize that it is actually one of the most deadly ingredients in the list. It may not say "poison" outright, but does it have to? It's almost as bad as corpus meat.

Drain health, intel and personality is a deadly mix, especially when considering it's only redeemable quality is levitation. The same is actually prolly true for spore pods as well, since spores are usually a very bad sign when cooking (they are what make many mushrooms uneatable) and with effects like paralyze, drain strength and drain fatigue it seems like it would not be good for a person's plate even if distilled. I guess you might get by using it, because it doesn't have any health damaging effects, but I sure wouldn't eat that.

I have long since thought that these are only usable in potions in extremely small amounts that are very highly processed and then tediously removed from the substance before bottling so that you only get it's essence in the liquid. At such a degraded state, I doubt they would make very good food for a meal at that point.

And a note on the "not food but can be eaten" section. Much of these would take some real creativity to use in a meal, and I doubt most folks even eat it if they knew what it was. (save for evil characters or mage sorts) They would also in theory be hard to acquire which is why many of them are worth so much. When I look at these I think, well, okay maybe in a specialty shop.


EDIT:

never mind the emeralds, looks like it was removed while I was writing and double checking my facts.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalism, I'm sure it will spark some ideas about new plant ingredients and effects, and generating in-game documents about their biology and use.

I disagree about the emerald being to hard to be considered consumable for only one reason, historically, diamond powder used to be considered a deadly poison. People honestly believed for centuries that Lucrezia Borgia used diamond powder to poison people. I don't see why powdered emerald wouldn't be considered to have edible properties in the game world, especially since you can actually eat them in the game. It's not something you'd probably use to spice local dishes though, since its far too rare and valuable. I'd relegate that to crazy mages dosing themselves.

Nice idea
You might want to look at PirateLord's Creatures X mod which adds some of the ingredients you mentioned like alit, guar and kagouti meat as ingredients, as well as other ingredients (curried imp glands anyone?)

Theres hints that Dreugh might be sentient, one being that
from the TIL article on them

Maholix -

I agree with you about the coda flower. I've removed it from the two lists it was in. I also removed gold kanet, hypha facia, and spore pod for the same reason. I left ingredients that had at least two positive effects.

I have another idea for the coda flower. Just as moon sugar can be used to make skooma, I'm thinking of creating a new drug, Levilla, that's made from coda flowers. It would be a Telvanni drug that weak-willed individuals would take to "get high". It makes you feel like you're flying, but it also makes you stupid, sick, and ugly. (Kinda reminds me of Mistress Therana.)

Regarding the "Can be eaten if necessary" section, I'm not sure what, if anything, I would do with these items. I certainly wouldn't put them in any normal meals, except for maybe moon sugar for Khajiit since the latest book implies that Khajiit regularly consume the stuff. (In fact, I think every Khajiit on the island should be carrying some.) Anyway, I might use these for weird, crazy characters like wacked out Necromancers, but since I'm working on restaurants at the moment this won't come up. Oh, wait, another exception - netch leather. Since Bosmers don't eat plants I may occasionally have netch leather in a meal aimed at them (as a "bread" or wrapper or base for other food).

Thank you for your comments!

Alaisiagae - Thanks for the pointer!

Stuporstar - I like the idea of powdered emerald. I also agree that it would be a mage thing. I was thinking of creating a type of cake or bread that would have an emerald hidden in it, kind of like Mardi Gras king cake, that the Telvanni would have as a treat. It wouldn't be very common, though. My thought was, you eat the cake and the emerald shows up in your inventory. Whether or not you then eat it is up to you.

Amazon Queen - I use Piratelord's Creatures mod, so I'll check it out. OK dreugh meat = gross! I don't want to be eating anything that might be sentient.

Thank you for your comments!

I think netch leather would be fine as a wrapper, maybe you can cook something inside it.. you know, like a heated pouch containing food or whatever. I dunno how I feel about it being used directly as food though. It's leather; doesn't sound very much like a meal item to me, especially since it seems that it's main purpose in MW is armor. It always confused me some of the things you could eat in the game. But maybe it is chewable. :blink:

I do wonder though. Those things are pretty big. Why is all we see their leather? I wonder what other uses they have. If you look at them, they are fairly odd creatures. I've often thought that something like "netch fluid" might exist that might be used for some industrial purpose such as in a potion or a lubricant or whatever. Maybe I can find something on them on the wiki. :huh:

Oh, and speaking of the netch, where does your idea for their milk come from? Is it in a major mod? I had forgotten that scuttle is how they make their cheese, but that begs the question as to why they would use it and not the netch if it did indeed have milk. I can see there is a hole in my education.. I know a lot about lore, but I seem to be lacking on a lot of knowledge on these creatures.

Anyway, I agree that scuttle must be really tasty. It's in most people's homes, has a number of nice effects, and no real down falls. It may be all the time I spent near the game affecting me, but I do kinda wish I could actually try it. It makes me curious.

OK, maybe I shouldn't use anything called 'leather' as food, since something tough enough to be used as armor or clothing wouldn't really be edible. Maybe I'll just use the word skin or rind when I need a wrapper. (Guar rind, anyone?)

Regarding the milk, I'm looking for a drinking fluid that's not booze and that could be used for bowls of 'cereal'. The only other drink I could find on the wiki was Trama tea. In thinking about all the animals, the netch seemed the most likely choice; hence the justification that a Betty netch gives birth to a live young and must feed it until it can forage on its own, so special tentacles provide milk. Even though some other mod(s) made up Guar milk, some people get annoyed about it because they think of guar as reptiles, and I don't see any anatomical features of guar that would be milk-producing.

If I use netch milk, I may create cheese made from it. After all, we have cow milk cheese, goat milk cheese, etc.

The menus that I'm creating are making me hungry.

Milk from a netch will give you gas. :nuke:

How about Guar tongue as a wrapper?

It will certainly give me gas. I'm lactose intolerant.

Hmm, guar tongue. That sounds like an interesting food. Thanks!

Here's some more for you Debi :
Barbecued Cliff Racer Wings
Hound Trotters ( perhaps smoked and then roasted or boiled )
Spit roasted Guar
Guar Eyes ( a weird little treat for the oddball Telvanni { yes Therana , I'm looking at you ! } )
Netch Yoghurt
Royal Jelly ( from Queen Kwama of course )
Agar Agar ( as there is seaweed in the seas around Vvardenfell )
Candied cuttle shaped into little Morrowind critters ( Hush child ! Here , have a Kagouti lolly ....)

Might be interesting to have a roll or biscuit stuffed with meat and cooked over a fire. I can't remember what they are called, but they are pretty tasty and certainly not out of place in MW. In fact, they are a prefect conclusion. They can be filled with spices or made very cheap and simple. If eaten indoors at an establishment, they seem kinda fancy, but are also easy to make when camping.. plus they fit in your hand, so they make good travel food. If served indoors, they are often eaten with a knife and fork. A usual serving depending on size is three or four. Occasionally they are covered in gravy.

It would not be unbelievable that the folks of MW would know how to make something similar, because they have bread and meats, and this food is very adaptable which would appeal to them. In RL these are filled with shreds of beef or lamb usually, though some people use nuggets of deer meat.. so in MW you'd be looking for a common meat that most of them would know and eat often in other dishes.

And I've yet to hear about a food type that would be downright plentiful in a society in this kind of a land. Soup!

CrazyGreggy - Love your suggestions. Great ideas! I put them in my off-line meal preparation list.

Maholix - I like your meat biscuit idea. I'll make up a few different preparations and some Dunmer names to go with them. I actually have something similar in the Rat in the Pot menu I'm currently working on (rat-based of course).

:facepalm: Soup! Jeez, how did I forget about that? Added to my prep list.

One other thing that has always bothered me : shortening . What do the Chefs of Morrowind use as butter and ( more importantly ) oil ? Are there some oil bearing plants or animals that get rendered down for cooking fat and oil ? Also , as a by-product of brewing : vinegar !

*ell, this could take MW 'alchemy' to a new quality level

My question would be: How far are You willing to go? Will this include PC ability to cook something too?
If so, I may have some ideas to add...

Reading a 'recipie book' may update player's journal with entry 'learned a recipe for...' and from this point s/he may be able to 'use' some cooking equipment (cauldron, stove, campfire(?)) and, provided s/he has all neccesary ingredients - 'preparation' takes place: if it's something simple (like roasted meat), You may get it right away, if it's some fancy dish - it could take more than couple game-hours to 'prepare', but if You wait for too long, food becomes 'spoiled' up to the point where it may become unedible...

Also there should be some ultimate dishes (may be made up from other dishes like: roasted meat + some souce + some salad + ...(?) (how 'bout some dreugh parts B) )), that may even have an ability to inrease a stat permanently - these, of course, should be wery rare, hard to get recipes (maybe quest given?) and have no more than 50% preparation success rate.

Since I realized how owerpowered alchemy in MW is, i've never really reayed on it anymore, but having an ability to create a meal with small fatigue regen (3-5 pts) for a long time (half a day in-game mb?) would be really refreshing...

The question of where to find types of milk has also been going on in the NoM thread. There's some more ideas in there.

Also, adding NoM compatibility options for this mod would be great.

I second that idea ! For bOkOnOn's comment about this turning into a full blown cooking mod - there are two crafting mods that cover cooking as a pseudo-skill so I am hoping that Debi will not travel down down that particular path . Being NoM compatible is , however , a great way to go ! Cheers Debi !

wow, wrong thread. stupid computer.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for more functionality of items and ability to do more. That's why I play bethesda games. But is cooking really the purpose of this mod? As I understand it, she intends to add foods to the inns so that they seem more like inns.. ya know, servicing characters and what not so they seem more real. So the purpose appears to be to have it cooked for you if you pony up some coin, maybe it's even included with the room in some places if you get the fancy one.


That said, NOM compatibility sure would be nice, since this is about eating. It would allow them to compliment each other. As for milk, might it be possible to um, "borrow" the imperials for that until you get a better idea? They have actual cheese, which is shown in OB, so they must have milk too. (odd that OB doesn't show that as a beverage)

I still don't know how I feel about netch being milk carriers. Out of the MW creatures, they seem most likely at first because they are supposedly MW cattle however, if you take that little line about them being cattle like out of the entry in UESP, (all it says is they act like cattle and are herded not that they ARE cattle) then milk would seem odd to come from them.



Basically they are over-sized jelly fish, made up of skin and vapor. That doesn't really seem like a milk producing animal, though with some effort I am sure there is a way you might eat them. Of course you'll have to think on how.. maybe those tentacles could be the fleshy part of them and thus eaten.


So with the netch out, imperials appear to be the answer, and it would even explain why scuttle is still the local cheese.. milk is an off the island import ordered by the imperials as part of the supplies for their forts.. and of course a few would sell it off to the locals for more than it is worth back home. Imperials are like that.. it helps local relations and their coin sacks.

Milk then would prolly only be available in imperial controlled areas, or major areas.. Vivec may have it, but not in most areas of the city. The ordinators are a stiff proud sect and would not readily welcome it into their capital. They have obviously been really strict in preventing imperial influence there.

Oh, and since it is an import that comes from the soldiers, I would think milk is a pricey item, kinda like if we imported something from far away in RL. With the soldiers raising the prices for their own gains it would be somewhat limited too, which is why the price would be so inflated if used in a meal.

Here a bowl of cereal is a cheap and basic meal, but in MW it would be more akin to a delicacy.

CrazyGreggy - Butter, oil, vinegar, and shortening are now on my list of things to think about.

b0k0n0n - I love this idea and have vaguely thought about some aspects of it already. This is way beyond the scope of what I'm currently doing as I am a novice modder at the moment, but I'll keep this idea on the back burner since it would certainly add some interesting play to the game and my main goal is to keep Morrowind fresh and interesting since I love the game so much and there are very few new games that hold my interest for long.

Stuporstar - I'll take a look at the NoM thread. I have NoM compatibility in mind, though I have not yet downloaded it to look at it.

Right now I'm trying to stay simple and create menus and some supporting atmosphere for each tavern and inn. This thread is mainly aimed at getting information on ingredients - which items that exist in the game are edible, which edible items should reasonably be expected to exist in the game, etc. I love all the meal ideas, so keep them coming.

I'm glad to see so much interest in the food concept!

EDIT: CrazyGreggy - Ah, if cooking mods already exist, then maybe I won't go that route. My interests right now are to add flavor, personality, and character to the game, though I hope to get more into scripting, dialogue, and questing later on.

Maholix - You are correct about my intent. I like, and agree with, your anolysis of the milk concept. In fact, I think I'll run with your idea that milk is imported, somewhat rare, and somewhat expensive. Why not make it a delicacy instead of a staple? One of the things that I like so much about this game is that it is intriguingly different in many ways from real life. I'm trying to expand on some concepts for things that I think would exist (like menus), yet stay true to the lore. I only hope I can do a half-way decent job of it.

Again, thanks to everyone for their ideas!