Flexible Cooking screenshot

About this mod

Features

  • Substitutes similar ingredients in all vanilla and Love of Cooking recipes, including modded ingredients where compatible.
  • Allows swapping cheese types, cooking oils, mushrooms, sugars, fish varieties, and many other items.
  • Corrects vanilla recipes (e.g., requires Rice for Fiddlehead Risotto, Cheese for Eggplant Parmesan).
  • Displays flexible ingredients in the cooking menu with a ☆ symbol or custom label; can be hidden for a vanilla look.
  • Some broader categories always show as “Ingredient (Any)”: Cheese, Cooking Oil, Flour, Sugar, Edible Mushroom, Mayonnaise, Chili.
  • Additional config tweaks enable custom recipe requirements (e.g., Sashimi limited to real fish, Stir Fry with any root vegetable, leafy green, edible mushroom, and cooking oil).

Requirements

  • Latest versions of Spacecore and Love of Cooking.
  • SMAPI (standard Stardew Valley mod loader).

Installation

  • Place the .dll in the Stardew Valley/Mods folder as usual for SMAPI mods.

Configuration

  • Use GMCM (Generic Mod Config Menu) to choose how flexible ingredients appear: “Ingredient☆”, “Ingredient (Any)”, or no label.
  • Extra config option for personal recipe tweaks (e.g., limiting fish sources, custom ingredient combos).

Compatibility

  • Only vanilla recipes are guaranteed to work.
  • Modded items work only if the author uses the game’s “context tag” system; not all mods do.
  • Json Asset mods and those not updated since before 1.6 are least likely to be compatible.
  • Natively compatible mods include: Cornucopia More Crops, More Flowers, and Artisan Machines; Wildflour Atelier Goods; Visit Mount Vapius; Stardew Valley Expanded; Bonster's Combined Crops and Recipes; Rose and the Alchemist; Ridgeside Village; Sunberry Village; East Scarp; More New Fish; Botany of Teyvat.
  • Compatible items rely on simple tag formats (e.g., *tomato_item*, *cheese_item*, *cooking_oil_item*, etc.). Full tag list available on the Context Tag Modding wiki page.
  • Mod authors can add compatibility by adding appropriate context tags to their items; template mod provided for CP items.

Known issues

  • Compatibility with modded items is not guaranteed; authors must implement context tags.
  • May unintentionally replace ingredients if not using Love of Cooking to control selections.

Credits Elizabeth — inspiration bblueberry — updates to Love of Cooking and Spacecore

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