A few cooking recipes are a little odd, as they don't require items that they should - items which are available in the game. Eggplant Parmesean - Does not require cheese. Fiddlehead Risotto - Does not require rice (risotto is a rice dish, correct?) I was also wondering if it'd be even possible in the coding to allow for optional ingredients to dishes to enhance the quality, but this was derived from my initial idea - putting milk in a preserves jar to create butter.
Kudos, that's an interesting and thematic way of keeping with the intent of generally limiting the overall ability to self-produce the cooking supplies from Pierre's.