Tomato standardisation?

[baldamundo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
It feels like there are some inconsistencies or unintuitive choices in a lot of the cooking recipes involving tomatoes and it could definitely do with looking over and rationalising.

• Tomatoes can be canned for long-term storage at a ratio of 1:1
• Tomatoes or irradiated tomatoes can be combined with water to make red sauce through various recipes (normal, canned, sealed jar, large sealed jar) at ratios of either 1:2, 1:4, or bizarrely 1:2.67. This seems like an unambiguous mistake.
• Canned tomatoes can be combined with water to make red sauce through the same recipes, but consistently at a ratio of 1:4.
• They can also be dehydrated or pickled for long-term storage, but this turns them into generic pickled veggy or dehydrated vegetables which are unable to be used in a number of recipes that specifically require tomatoes or their processed versions.
• Canned, irradiated or normal tomatoes can be combined with salt and vinegar to make ketchup for medium-term storage at a ratio of 1:2, however ketchup is never useable in the tomato-only recipes, and in most recipes it can be swapped out for much more common and longer shelf-life ingredients like seasoned salts. Besides currywurst where it is the only ingredient option.
• In some of the ingredients that require tomatoes, they can be swapped for red sauce, but not all of them. There are also a few recipes where red sauce but not tomatoes can be swapped for ketchup, and some recipes where red sauce can be swapped for curry powder, and some where it can be swapped for chilli powder. Given that curry/chilli powder is a dry, spicy powder with no nutritional value, and red sauce is a nutritious, savoury liquid, this seems like it must be a mistake?

Describe the solution you'd like
The minimum changes I'd recommend are:

1. Ensure that the recipes for making red sauce all maintain the same ratio of ingredients
2. Remove any incidences where red sauce can be swapped with chilli powder or curry powder
3. Ensure that curry powder and chilli powder are always interchangeable (I think there's currently no recipe for curry powder)
4. Decide whether or not processing tomatoes into red sauce should give you an efficiency saving for recipes that can take either (although if not, it's not clear there's a lot of purpose for red sauce)
5. Ensure that tomatoes and red sauce are interchangeable in all recipes (maybe unless it's something that would normally be served with raw tomatoes?) and maintain the ratios decided in 4.

Also, is 'red sauce' actually what this is called in the US? I'd suggest renaming it tomato purée or passata for clarity - I suspect the more ambiguous 'red sauce' is probably why some of the recipes seem inconsistent.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Probably there ought to be a much wider overhaul/standardisation/rationalisation of the cooking recipes, but personally I don't have the energy to try and work that out. Particularly it feels like the recipes around e.g. hamburgers/sandwiches/tortillas are quite arbitrary/inconsistent.

Personally I'd be inclined to try and build a much more standardised and flexible system that moves away from extremely specific recipes so you have more consistent interchangeable ingredient categories e.g.
x, y or z generic vegetable
x, y or z leafy vegetable
x, y or z flavour vegetable (e.g. onion, tomato, pickle)
x, y or z dry savoury powder
x, y or z liquid savoury flavouring

It could also be worth thinking about adding dried tomatoes.

Additional context
It's worth noting that tomatoes are a particular special case of vegetable that in practice often act as a huge limiting factor on a lot of recipes. Lots of recipes specifically require tomatoes or tomato-derivatives, they're relatively rare, have a particularly short shelf life, and have no dehydrated equivalent. So the balance issues are a lot more sensitive than a lot of other ingredients.

Personally I feel like it's currently much too rare - I don't know exactly what things are like in New England, but if it's anything like old England, the spawn rate for canned tomatoes or canned 'red sauce' should probably be pretty high.

[KorGgenT]

i always thought red sauce was "tomato paste"

[cainiaowu]

IIRC there are such system called "requirement" for recipes, but they are not getting used enough though.

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/blob/master/data/json/requirements/cooking_components.json

[snipercup]

Im going to work on this but there's a lot in this issue so i'll break it into smaller peices. Thanks for providing the solution you'd like, I can work with that. Unfortunately my IRL cooking skill is 0 so I don't know how this will turn out. I'll pick the ratio of ingredients first.

[snipercup]

Well the ratios are done but that is just the start of it. I dont know when I will work on this issue again but I will comment again when I will start working on this issue again. In the mean time feel free to try to fix the issues stated above. Please post here if you are working on it so we dont start doing double work.

[lazho]

I think the reason people keep putting red sauce as a substitute for curry/chili-p is that they think "red sauce" means hot sauce... Since that's red as well. Maybe a rename to sauce_tomato would make it clearer.

[qoreQyaS]

• Ensure that the recipes for making red sauce all maintain the same ratio of ingredients
• Remove any incidences where red sauce can be swapped with chilli powder or curry powder
• Ensure that curry powder and chilli powder are always interchangeable (I think there's currently no recipe for curry powder)
• Decide whether or not processing tomatoes into red sauce should give you an efficiency saving for recipes that can take either (although if not, it's not clear there's a lot of purpose for red sauce)
• Ensure that tomatoes and red sauce are interchangeable in all recipes (maybe unless it's something that would normally be served with raw tomatoes?) and maintain the ratios decided in 4.