Salem

It seems to me that the new food system would lend itself well to a new layer of complexity and fun.
So here's what I've come up with.

Herbs and spices.
Step 1: drying. All plant and fungus based foreagables are now dryable, in a drying rack.
Step 2: grinding powder. Requires alchemy table and dried foreagable
step 3: mixing. combine two powders into a spice, at the alchemy table.

Now this spice will do the following when applied to food:
- it reduces the chance, and severity of one specific food type invariance reduction
- it improves the chance, and restore of one specific food type invariance restoration

now let's say abovementioned chances are influenced by your gastronomy bonus gained from slotted items, or pots and pans proficiency, whatever makes more sense to people,
and the severity is capped by your sugar and spices proficiency.

For every combination of dried foreagables possible, you'd get a specific spice. Up to the player to find out which spices should be added to which foods, to make use of their invariance buffs.

Your thoughts?

be nice if the dried plants acted like dry fish does also

I like this idea.

I support this idea.

Part 2: Spicey spices

Step 1: make a herb spice as mentioned in my OP
step 2: grind up bellpeppers, garlic cloves into sauce
step 3: mix bellpepper / garlic paste with herb spice into a spicey spice

now this spicey spice will have 3 affinities, based on the two food categories the herb spice affects, and the type of sauce (red / yellow bellpepper, or garlic) used.
When applied to a glut food, it will increase the purity multiplier of said food, based on how many affinities the spice shares with the food.
It will however also slightly increase the fed up time for the food.

- has a chance of giving the player the 'flatulence' debuff for 24h. They WILL hear you coming.

This is really great, i've always wanted something along these lines

Perhaps Sugar & Spice rather then Pots & Pans proficiency should be used, the name is a better match after all and S&S has no interactions yet.

This would allow a specialized 'chef' character without modifying the existing food production system which might be to penalizing to normal and starting characters that have low proficiency. Their are a lot of players that would like to play a chef specialist, indeed many already are but don't have any proficiency bonus to interact with. Or some different and more mild interaction could exist with Pots & Pans so to be a basic 'cook' just requires P&P to make food but to be really elite you need Sugar and Spice proficiency to season it to perfection!

Also I could see a set of mid to high level foragable 'herbs' that are raw material for spices/sauces, garlic and peppers don't have all that many combinations after all.