The Sims 4 Gourmet Cooking Skill Guide
When a sim reaches level five of the cooking skill they can start gaining the sims 4 gourmet cooking skill too!
Gaining this ability is awesome because this cooking style has fancier food options than homestyle cooking does.
What is Gourmet Cooking Good For?
Gourmet cooking is great if you have a sim in your household is a foodie and wants to eat good meals for positive moodlets.
It’s also great if you have a sim in the chef branch of the culinary career!
How to Gain The Gourmet Cooking Skill
The gourmet cooking skill is gained in two ways, the first is by reading skill books that you can purchase on any bookcase in the game. There are three gourmet cooking books:
- Gourmet Cooking Vol 1: Make Food Fancy
- Gourmet Cooking Vol 2: Presentation is King
- Gourmet Cooking Vol 3: Can You Eat That?
You’ll want to start with the first book and move up in volumes as your sim gains the skill.
The other way to gain the skill is just by cooking. You’ll want to click on the fridge and choose gourmet meals instead of regular cooking and this will gain the gourmet skill!
Best Mood to Practice Gourmet Cooking
When The Sims 4 was released everything was about emotions because they have a huge impact on your sims. There is an emotion that is tied to skill gains for every skill in the game.
The best mood for gaining the gourmet cooking skill is going to be inspired. You can get your sims to feel inspired by taking a thoughtful shower right before you start cooking or by browsing art on a computer.
Best Traits for Gourmet Sims
The traits you choose for a sim are important because they can have impact on their skill gains and mood when doing certain things. The following are great traits for gourmet cooking:
- Creative: Since inspired is the best for cooking you want to have a creative sim because they are going to feel inspired more often.
- Foodie: Foodie sims aren’t necessarily going to have a better time gaining the skill, but they can get positive moodlets through eating the food and that’s nice.
- Cheerful: I love making my sims cheerful because they are more likely to get happy moodlets which can stack with inspired.
You should also take into account the lot traits you choose for your household. You can add these in the build mode at the top left corner. You should choose these to help with gourmet cooking:
- Homey: Homey is a great trait because it helps gain multiple different skills more quickly
- Chef’s Kitchen: This lot trait came with City Living and is great because it boosts skills gains for culinary skills
How to Cheat The Gourmet Cooking Skill
I love cheating skills in The Sims 4, especially when starting a new family because no one is dropped on earth at age 20 with 0 skills like my sims can be. So, cheating gourmet cooking is allowed in my book!
The cheat you need to know is stats.set_skill_level Major_gourmetcooking 10 to max out the skill. If you want a different level of the skill you just change the 10, for example, change it to stats.set_skill_level Major_gourmetcooking 7 to get level 7 of the skill.
Gourmet Cooking Skill Levels
| Skill Level | Level Rewards |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Your sims are now able to cook gourmet dishes like Garlic Noodles and Pasta Primavera. |
| Level 2 | Your sims are now able to cook dishes like Chicken Saltimbocca and Butternut Gnocchi. |
| Level 3 | Sims will now do a fancy move with spices when cooking. Your sims can now cook dishes such as Spinach Frittata and Herb-Crusted Salmon. |
| Level 4 | Your sims can now cook Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus. |
| Level 5 | Sims will now slice things in the air when cooking. Your sim can now cook a Tiered Cake or Sim City Cheesecake. |
| Level 6 | Your sim can now cook Rack of Lamb. |
| Level 7 | Your sim can now cook Lobster Tortellini and Lobster Thermidor. |
| Level 8 | Sims can now research advanced cooking techniques on the computer to get inspired. Your sim can now cook a Monte Cristo Sandwich. |
| Level 9 | Sims can now share cooking secrets with others. Sims can now cook Trout Meunière. |
| Level 10 | Sims can now garnish dishes which can improve quality. Sims can now cook Baked Alaska and Ambrosia. |
Bring Ghosts Back to Life With Ambrosia
At level 10 of the gourmet cooking skill your sims are going to unlock the ability to cook ambrosia! This is a dish that when consumed by a ghost will bring them back to life, how cool! You’ll need a few things to get this done:
- Death Flower
- Angelfish
- Potion of Youth
Consuming this as a living sim will turn back their age to the beginning of their current life stage!
Fresh Chef Trait
When your sims are able to complete the master chef aspiration they are going to get my favourite reward trait which is fresh chef.
This reward trait is great for playing lots of generations of the same family. Why? Well, this makes it so food cooked by this sim will never spoil.
This means you can have this sim cook so many meals before they pass away and their descendants can eat this food until it runs out!
Base Game Gourmet Cooking Recipes
There are so many recipes in The Sims 4 and new ones are added all the time. Below you’ll find every recipe that’s available for your sims to cook with their gourmet cooking skill in the base game only.
| Recipe | Unlock Level | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Garlic Noodles | 1 | §4 |
| Gourmet Fruitcake | 1 | §40 |
| Pasta Primavera | 1 | §4 |
| Black & White Cake | 1 | §25 |
| White & Black Cake | 1 | §25 |
| Butternut Gnocchi | 2 | §6 |
| Chicken Saltimbocca | 2 | §5 |
| Spinach Frittata | 3 | §7 |
| Salt and Pepper Shrimp Cocktail | 3 | §25 |
| Herb-Crusted Salmon | 3 | §7 |
| Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus | 4 | §8 |
| Tiered Cake | 5 | §25 |
| SimCity Cheesecake | 5 | §37 |
| Rack of Lamb | 6 | §42 |
| Lobster Tortellini | 7 | §12 |
| Lobster Thermidor | 7 | §12 |
| Monte Cristo Sandwich | 8 | §14 |
| Trout Meuniere | 9 | §19 |
| Baked Alaska | 10 | §25 |
| Ambrosia | 10 | §0 |
Mentoring The Sims 4 Gourmet Cooking Skill
When a sim reaches level 5 of the gourmet cooking skill you’ll unlock the ability to mentor other sims in this skill. This will help the mentee sim gain the skill more quickly which is awesome!
If you have The Sims 4: Business & Hobbies installed you can even mentor for money and earn 430 simoleons per hour if you have a maxed out skill level.
