The ease of ruining a recipe had crossed my mind, so I figured the easiest way to handle that would simply be to limit how any given recipe could be ruined. One way I considered that was by letting the player making the recipe also have access to a list of things that could be added to it that would actually improve it, as well as what would ruin it. The easiest way to do that would simply be to have a player's recipe be secret from other players; you might see that your opponent's prepping chicken and lettuce recipes, but are they making a salad or a sandwich?

If something were added that had no positive or negative benefit (such as throwing olives on a steak), you could spend an action next turn simply removing the offending ingredient. If, on the other hand, your opponent inadvertently tried to ruin a recipe by putting something helpful on, you'd end up scoring extra points on their behalf!

As for how to balance things out...I was thinking limiting the amount of stuff you could do in a turn, making a player think stuff like "Okay, so do I put some mayo on the BLT I'm making, or do I dump it on what appears to be my opponent's goulash?"

...Which, by itself, would completely justify the creation of such a game now that I think about it. :D


All that being said, though, I'm rather glad you put this idea in my head; this is sounding pretty fun!