My current focus is on trying to lend a hand in making some sense out of cooking.
It seems that most of the cooking research leans towards massive recipes, which require massive amounts of herbs. While those are extremely useful, most of my time in Egypt is spent solo and I end up with a lot of spoiled food - and wasted valuable herbs.
My goal is to find decent duration recipes with the minimum amounts of ingredients.
My ultimate base recipe that meets this need is:
1 cabbage 1 carp 1 watermelon 1 abdju 1 phagrus 1 chromis 1 camel meat
This recipe gives +1 end, +1 con, +1 foc and +1 per and lasts for 26 minutes. 7 ingredients = 26 minutes
I have tested a large number of herbs and most of the mushrooms with this base, using just 1 at a time.
You can find a chart with my results at http://atitd.3trends.com
Will these numbers plug right into another recipe? No Why? It has to do with the size of the recipe and dilution. They will, however, work very well with my base to determine what works with what and for how long.
In other words, if you combine a +12str with a +14str, you will get a +26 str recipe.
But, the duration also has to be considered. The duration for these 2 herbs by themselves is 31 min and 4 min which you would expect to give about 9 min duration (+5 min and -22 min from the base of 26 minutes).
The actual recipe is 9 minutes of +25 str (and -13 dex -24 end 1 spd 12 con 14 foc and -11 per) - The two herbs used are White Pepper Plant and Whitebelly. The results were very close to the exact expectations from the chart.
Unfortunately, this isn't accomplished without some exceptions... There are some herbs that simply do not like each other. When this occurs, the stats will still stack correctly, but there may be a MAJOR hit on duration.
For instance, Garlic Chives, alone is -7 minutes and Katako Root (which was a mp) is -8 minutes. When combined they give -31 minutes duration! Even when doubling the base, these two, together, only give 8 minute duration. Not the combination you want to use for focus and perception.
That is where I am at, right now -- testing for different combinations of herbs (and shrooms). For the most part, the numbers are right on - as more herbs are added to the base, inconsistencies arise in duration. Also, some combinations of herbs simply don't work together very well...
I will be updating this page with the various recipes that I discover.