Hello! I'm Katu, and this is Caupona. Caupona is a cooking mod with free-form recipes, which is based on ancient Roman techniques. It's also very complicated and has little documentation aside from the ingame book and the mod page.

So to clear up some confusion, I'm making this video. I'd like to give credit to astraLazuli and DWX for helping me figure all this out.

Firstly, we are using version 0.2.7 of the mod for 1.19.2, which has a few bugs regarding Stock which should be worked out in the next release.

Normally, Stock is made with using bone and poultry, but right now, no combination is valid, and so items can only be made with Nail Soup or Scalded Milk. Stock also cannot convert into Aspic at the moment. I have a datapack in, which disables Stock entirely, so you won't see it appear in my JEI. This video is filmed in my Cottage Witch modpack, so you may see other mods or texture packs.

With that out of the way, let's begin!

To start, you'll need a Clay Pot, which you can then smelt into a Stew Pot. To make a Soup, the Stew Pot must be placed on a heat source. By default, this is the Stove added by Caupona, but modpack makers can configure additional heat sources by adding the block tag "caupona:stoves."

The Stove needs to be provided with fuel such as coal or logs, and the model will change depending on what fuel is inside.

(use Goulash for examples)

Now we're ready to cook! You can view the recipes in JEI, but you'll notice that if you click on the Soup directly, you will only see a "Container Filling" recipe. Left click on the liquid on the left to go to the cooking recipe, or go to the end of the items and click directly on the forge liquid for the soup.

Here's how to read the images you're seeing. In the center is the liquid you'll need, also known as the Base. This can be Nail Soup - which is boiled water - Scalded Milk, or Stock. Except that Stock is disabled in my game at the moment.

Surrounding the liquid is a ratio for how many ingredients you need per bowl of Base. This is almost always 0.75 items per bowl of fluid. One bucket is four bowls, so you'll need at least 3 items per recipe. However, you can use up to 9 ingredients in the proper ratios, and the resulting Soup will give additional saturation. Note that if you're using a mod like AppleSkin, it will not always tell you the correct saturation value. However, when you eat it, you'll see it applied correctly.

On the right is the result of the recipe.

Beneath this are two categories: Must Contain, and Rejects. These are pretty self-explanatory. In order to make Goulash, you must include Beef and Vegetables, and Beef must be the majority item. For example, 3 beef and 1 carrot. You also must not include Seafood or Grain/Cereals. If you do 2 beef and 2 carrots, or if you add fish or wheat, then the recipe will be invalid and won't cook.

So let's make some Goulash. First, fill the Stew Pot with water. Then, boil the water into Nail Soup by pressing the "cook" button. If you forget to boil the water first, the recipe will do it for you after you add the ingredients and start cooking.

Now Goulash is made with "majority of beef" and "some vegetables." That means we could make it with 8 beef and 1 beetroot. Or 5 beef and 3 potatoes. Or 5 beef, 1 carrot, and 1 tomato. You can also add potions! The potions must have a duration: you cannot use Instant potions. You can add multiple potions to one recipe.

Up here you'll see a slot for Spices. Adding spices to your soups will give them extra saturation. We'll go into spices in a moment.

Once you've added all your ingredients, you press Cook and wait for it to finish! You'll see that we lost some fluid volume while boiling - this is normal. You can then extract the result with Bowls.

Soups in bowls don't stack, however, you can stack them by turning them into Aspic! Normally you can only turn into Aspic soups which are made with Stock. However, that's currently bugged, so my datapack allows for Aspic to be made of soups made with Nail Soup as well.

Aspic is made through a process called "Resting Conversion," which can happen in a Stew Pot or a Dolium. It takes a very long time - a whole in-game day - so don't be surprised if it takes a while for you to see progress. It can be sped up with tick speed increasers such as Time in a Bottle, and the chunks must be loaded for it to progress.

Aspic can be thawed in a Stew Pot, but I have found this to be a little buggy, perhaps because of my datapack. So let's discuss the other method: the Portable Brazier. This handheld item allows you to thaw Aspics on the go, although it requires both Vivid Charcoal (made with Magma Cream) and non-stackable Bowls of Water. So I question how truly portable this is. To thaw, place the Aspic, water, and coal into the Brazier, and voila! Soup!

Aside from Aspic, there are two other major features accessed through Resting Conversion: certain Spices, and the Gravy Boat.

First, let's address the spices.

There are four jars of spice that the mod adds: Vinegar, Sugar, Garum, and Chives. Sugar and Chives are made just by crafting. Normally, Chives is only craftable with Alliums, but in my datapack it will accept anything tagged with "onion."

Vinegar and Garum are both crafted in the Dolium. You must place fruit for vinegar, or fish for garum, into the Dolium, along with a Flower Pot to catch it. It will not begin conversion until the Flower Pot is present. Each Spice Jar has durability, so it can be used for multiple recipes.

Next up is the Gravy Boat, which is necessary for the final topic of the day: stir-frying! Gravy Boats are made by pressing Walnuts inside a Dolium using an Anvil. You'll also need a Glass Bottle or an empty Gravy Boat to catch the result.

Once you've gotten your Gravy Boat, you'll need a pan or stone for Stir-Frying. Place the utensil on a heat source, and place the Gravy next to it by holding shift and right clicking in the world. The good news is that these recipes are read in exactly the same way as the soups: simply add in the ingredients it asks for and omit those it will reject, and you can make yourself some delicious, super-saturating foods.

Well, that's it for the cooking aspects of Caupona. There are a few other things to the mod, such as building blocks and the hypocaust baths - but these are explained in the guidebook, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with them.

Thanks for watching, and have a great day!