Cataclysm-dda: 🌶️ Making chilli powder violates conservation of mass 🌶️

[pjf]

Describe the bug

• Two chilli peppers weigh 110g, and take up 170ml of volume
• Refined into chilli powder, they weigh 500g, and use 250ml of volume
• Where does the additional 390g of mass come from?

Steps To Reproduce

1. Find or grow 2×🌶️
2. Turn into chilli powder
3. Observe increased mass

Expected behavior

Food processors should use much more energy if they're able to generate mass on this scale.

Versions and configuration

585fbbe03d633d760f117c97f26e9b224dccbfc6, Linux

Additional context

I would fix this myself, but it's not clear what the correct solution would be. Making chilli powder lighter and smaller wouldn't be consistent with other spices, as it inherits from the generic spice item.

Also if 100 units of chilli powder weighs 500g, then some of our cooking recipes are using truly ungodly amounts of chilli.

Maybe just lightening chilli powder is okay, because it's such potent stuff?

[Funguss]

Well, having a chilli create _less_ powder seems sensible. I must admit, I never really measure my spices... Is 5g a lot? If so we could probably tone down the quantity of spice in all recipes, therefore changing the spice item might work out at the best solution all round. I know the use rate of pepper has often felt off to me, alongside how rarely you find it. Salt usage also seems a bit OTT.

Also, most of these items don't currently have a nutritional value, which is also off. It would be nice to see some effects from capsaicin in cooking, for instance, and for this to translate into the chemistry changes.

[jkraybill]

4 ounces of fresh chillies yields 1oz powder IRL (https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/cayenne-powder/). I would be in favour of reducing the yield in the game, and decreasing the requirements in recipes that use chili powder.

This probably should be done in conjunction with a review of similar food powders in the game, there are probably similar issues elsewhere.

[Funguss]

Aha, that calls for a dehydrator, too. Well, that makes sense. It also exposes one of my pet peeves: most food is lacking in quench value. But that's a much, much bigger problem, and would require thirst being tied to stamina use and a more comprehensive emulation of exertion in general.

I totally agree regarding powders. In this case it could be that whoever wrote the recipe got the numbers backwards, or it's a simple oversight.

[wapcaplet]

I have made chili powder for real a few times, and 2 dried peppers won't yield more than a couple spoonfuls of chili powder. Plus, a real chili powder recipe should include a few other seasonings like garlic powder, cumin, and/or paprika (none of which exist in the game yet - though we do have garlic bulbs that I suppose could be dried and processed into garlic powder).

The chili powder weight and units (along with many other spices) are copied the base "spice" class in data/json/items/classes/comestible.json, which has 100 charges of 5g each. That's quite a lot of any spice -- 500g of chili powder is about 1 quart, basically one of those 20 oz jugs from Costco.

And these 500g of spices fit into 250ml, so their density must be 2g/ml, twice as dense as water. That's some atomic chilly-P! Most real spices (having very little moisture) should have a density considerably less than 1g/ml. Chili powder is about 0.54g/ml. Maybe there's an argument here for simply reducing the overall yield of the generic "spice" class, to somewhere around 100-200g (which is a much more typical weight for the items in my spice cabinet).

At any rate we could use a more realistic chili powder recipe, one requiring a lot more peppers, and at least some garlic.

[Funguss]

Just to add to this, one of the reasons (I assume) for having the recipe is for preservation. If we're going to have garlic in the recipe then having dried and smoked chili pepper would be good.

Also... Two singular chilies? That's a ludicrously low amount from one plant! My dad grew some once, tiny little plant but it produced loads of the hottest chilies I've ever eaten. I guess that's nothing new with farming in game right now, though