i thought since this here is the preferred platform i'd repost my idea here:

currently cooking has a lot of usability problems. so i'm proposing some things that would make it more enjoying in the long run:
1. make the cookbook be a shortcut for cooking when you open it from a tool, it should auto-place the tool in a free spot if possible (otherwise nothing happens, maybe an error shows or so) and then it will auto-fill the ingredient slots
2. make batch-cooking possible. so like if you use a multitude of the ingredients specified in the recipe, it should produce x2, x3 ...
3. when you manually fill in stuff, e.g. to find a new recipe, then implement a tolerance. like e.g. if you add 1 rice and 1 water it's no valid recipe. but instead you could have a list showing like "did you mean ...?" and then you can click there. that way your personal cooking knowledge would pay off and the recipes are way too specific either way.
3.a.: make recipe discovery more fun. drop hints in NPC dialogues and implement a detection when you're close to a new recipe, like ingredients with insufficient count become yellow, red if it's the wrong ingredient, and green if it's correct [by Chaos.Queen.Aeria]
4. or 3.b.: implement a tolerance for recipes in general. like for example if you make baked potato without pepper. or using herbs instead. cooking is not that exact, it's not like you forget one minor ingredient and it will turn into charcoal
5. make it easier to obtain more recipes in general
6. when dragging a stack to a cooking slot, only place one item for more convenience (as most recipes barely use >2) [by PattAnderson], alternative would be to use a hotkey like ctrl + LMB (or ALT + LMB) to quick-place one item which'd reduce clicks even further [by Ultimoron]
7. Be able to access different kind of storages while cooking, like the fridge. it could just be another tab that's added to the inventory, or another button like in how to access the cookbook. as addition to 1. those storages should also count when auto-assingning