Every ingredient has a flavour profile and a quality score ranging from (1) to a high of (3), indicated by yellow pips. Every dish you whip up has a quality score of (1) to (5) stars based on:

(1) Ingredient Quality (Free point!)
(2) Ingredient Quality
(3) Ingredient Quality
(4) Flavour Combos
(5) Texture

In your first season, it's difficult to score higher than (2) or (3) on most dishes due to not having the correct prep stations or enough high quality ingredients.

Most ingredients start with one of five flavour profiles. The flavour of many ingredients can be changed by adding a spice at the correct prep station.

⚪️ Bitter (gray blue)
🔵 Salty (aqua blue)
🟢 Sour (green)
🔴 Spicy (red)
🟣 Sweet (purple)

Dishes score a Flavour Combo bonus when (a) the ingredients are all two flavours, and (b) the two flavours are complementary.

The Recipe tab of your Encyclopedia includes a grid of "discovered" Flavour Combos. Every time you combine two new flavours, the grid is updated to show whether the flavours were complementary or incompatible.

Some recipes that require specific ingredients will always have the same flavour. The flavour of other recipes is determined by the ingredients; typically, adding two or more ingredients with the same flavour will change the flavour of the dish. If you have 3+ ingredients with different flavours and no duplicates, Sour and Spicy seem to be overpowering.



(A) Your first goal is to complete the dish with two complementary flavors.

(B) If you have three different flavors happening, check your spice list. See if you can add an appropriate spice to something like fish or onions that can be cooked in a pan (or other available prep station). Adding spice will change the ingredient's flavour, so you can still get that "Flavour Combo." Only waste spices when you need to!

(C) Your second goal is to use quality ingredients. Using nothing but 3-star ingredients will unlock all (3) stars here.

Texture is based on two sliding scales, represented in the bottom right by a sort of coordinate plane: Smooth or Crunchy on the y-axis, and Crisp or Tender on the x-axis. The platter symbol represents your current texture, and the Yellow Ticket Thingy (yes, that's the official term) represents the goal texture.

You reach the goal by preparing each ingredient the correct way at the correct work stations.



Smooth vs. Crunchy is controlled by chopping ingredients.

In our example and highly professional art, the Yellow Ticket Thingy is slightly chunkier than our baseline dish. That means, I want to do a semi-lousy job of chopping.

If a recipe should be SUPER CHUNKY, chop twice and press "okay" / "x" / whatever as soon as the option appears. If it should be super smooth, chop until the bar is full. If you're aiming for something in between, then stop at roughly in the middle and inch your way there with each ingredient.



When you're done chopping, some ingredients can be moved to another prep station instead of The Bowl. This other prep station lets you adjust the "Crisp / Tender" status, and change the ingredient's flavour with a seasoning.

⚠️ The Pan you start with only increases the "Tender" value, and runs automatically (so time your exit carefully!). After you unlock and advance the Cooking Club, you receive a prep station that allows you to increase a recipe's "Crisp" value.

Just like with Smooth/Crunchy, you'll cook until the desired tenderness. In this case, I stopped when the arrow hit 3/5 of the bar.

When you have multiple ingredients that can be processed, you want to inch closer to the goal with every ingredient and hopefully get it right on the last ingredient. When you get it right, the Yellow Ticket Thingy glows.



The example showed a 4-star meal: two stars for quality ingredients, one star for texture, and one star for flavour combo. If I had used all 3-star ingredients, it would be a 5-star meal.

Unless you completely failed to pin down either flavour or texture, the final dish will have one of three tags:

(A) Flavourful - meaning you secured the favour bonus.
(B) Textured - meaning you scored the texture bonus.
(C) Well-Balanced - meaning you have both the flavour and texture bonus.

After some extremely professional experiments (ahem), I don't think the tags impact the quality of the meal or how favorably it is received. The tags only seem to tell you if you got one star or two stars from preparation.