The Art of Cooking

Most Scarterran adults can cook well enough to live. If your character has a dot of Survival, Hearth Wisdom, Seneschal, or Crafts. Your character can be part of "most Scarterran adults". It doesn't normally need a roll. Just assume if your character has access to basic food, he or she can cook it well enough.   "Basic food" is relative. Even if his wife does most of the cooking, a fisherman almost certainly knows many ways to cook fish. But if he's only had beef once in life when attending a fancy wedding, he probably doesn't know how to cook beef properly. A ranch hand that herds cows for a living probably knows how to cook beef even if he doesn't get to eat beef every day.   If you want to make a delicious meal, and not just an edible meal, normally you would roll Intelligence + Hearth Wisdom. Difficulty is based on the availability of quality ingredients and the pickiness of the meal's intended recipients. If the ingredients or recipes the cook knows very well, add a bonus die or two. If the chef is using an exotic ingredient never tried before, penalize a die or two.

If your character is feeding a castle's staff and not the lord of the castle, he is probably focusing more on quantity, not quality. Army cooks and managers of large inns are in a similar boat. Roll Intelligence + Seneschal to properly manage your food stores to feed a large group of people. Difficulty is based mostly on the quality of ingredients and the time constraints on preparing the meal. If you get extra successes, you achieve quantity and quality.   If your character has a Craft area of expertise in something food related, Intelligence + Crafts can be rolled to make a large quantity of food that also tastes delicious, at least within the character's area of expertise, characters with Craft (brewing) or Craft (baking) routinely make large quantities of tasty ale and bread. You don't normally have to roll for a character doing something routine for them. A baker or brewer would only need to make a Crafts roll if making a special order or working with substandard ingredients.   A professional baker probably knows the basics of cooking things that aren't bread, same with an ale maker. If they have to act outside their wheelhouse, they can prepare a large meal at +1 or +2 difficulty.