In my opinion cooking has an issue and it comes down to its straightforwardness meaning when you select something let’s say bone broth after some time depending on your perks at the end of the process you are just getting a bone broth.
I would make 3 improvements:
1.make rarities for cooked meals - when you start cooking a bone broth at the end you can get 5 types common, uncommon, rare, epic or legendary.
Effects:
common bone broth - nothing
uncommon - meals cooked with this have a 5% chance to be duplicated.
rare - meals cooked with this have 2x chance for it to be of higher quality.
epic - 2x the effect of the finished meal
legendary - meals cooked with this have a random bonus effect.
(those are crazy effects that can be toned down, but you get the idea)
2.high level meals that require other meals of higher rarity
for example AMBROSIA - to cook this you need to be level 99 and it calls for all other meals in legendary rarity.
(crazy but it would be a nice to have something to grind towards)
3.something like temple chains but for all meals to level up your rarity chance/cooking time/duplication chance.
