Spices and seasonings in Project Zomboid

Seasonings matter in evolved recipes: soups, stews, salads, sandwiches, stir fries, pasta, tacos and similar dishes you build up one ingredient at a time (see cooking). When you add an ingredient, the game lists spices separately as spices, while food items show how much hunger they use.

A spice adds little or no food value. What it adds is mood: each spice lowers the finished dish's boredom and, more strongly, its unhappiness, on top of what the main ingredients give. That helps with the bored and unhappy moodles described on the mood page.

• In many dishes spices do not count toward the ingredient cap. A sandwich takes 4 ingredients plus spices, a salad 6 plus spices, and a soup 6 not counting spices.
• Variety counts. Each new ingredient gives about -5 boredom and unhappiness the first time; a third copy of the same item cancels that bonus and a fourth adds a penalty (one source). Whether spices follow the same rule was not confirmed.
• Below Cooking 7 the game refuses rotten food and rotten spices in a dish.

Exact happiness values per spice, and whether Cooking level scales them, were not confirmed for 42.22. The table below gives the effect type, not figures.

Which seasonings each dish accepts changes from dish to dish, so check the add menu. The soup and stew list is the widest: basil, chives, cilantro, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme, lemongrass, mallow, nettles, rose hips, chili peppers, salt, pepper and more.

Build 42 added many herbs to farming, so a long game no longer depends on finding spice racks. Herbs follow the same planting months and water rules as other crops. Figures below are from build42guide's crop table.

Opinion: thyme, rosemary and sage are the easiest herbs to keep alive because they need little water. Full numbers for every crop are on crop data.

Foraging gives free seasonings from spring to autumn. The Wild Herbs search focus, which includes kitchen herbs, opens at Foraging 4. Lemongrass can be picked up from skill 0 without any recipe knowledge. Wild garlic, plantain, comfrey, common mallow and black sage need Herbalist knowledge to recognize, and most of them are medicine first and seasoning second.

Rain raises the chance of finding wild plants and the hours after rain raise it a little less, while snow cuts it. Dried herbs keep indefinitely, so dry spare herbs rather than freezing them. See seasons for what grows when.

Salt, pepper, sugar, ketchup, mustard and other packaged condiments are kitchen loot. Check counters, cupboards and fridges in houses, and the shelves of grocery stores, restaurants and diners. Honey is found as loot; the sources checked did not confirm beekeeping in vanilla Build 42. See loot locations for which buildings to search.

Opinion: grab every salt and pepper shaker early. They weigh little, and salt doubles as a jarring ingredient (one salt or seasoning salt per jar) on the food preservation page.

Opinion: these habits give the best mood return per item.

• Add spices to big shared dishes such as a full pot of soup, so one shaker improves several servings.
• Mix different seasonings instead of stacking one, to keep the variety bonus.
• Use spices before they rot; rotten ones are refused below Cooking 7.
• Pair seasonings with butter and eggs from ranching for the strongest baked dishes.

A dish with no seasoning at all is still filling, so skip spices when you only need calories and save them for meals eaten while bored or sad. Full dish ideas are on best meals, and the full list of evolved recipes is on recipes.