Summary
Same old bread, same old apples, same old milk and cake. Everyone's grown tired of the same stuff, but Blue's happily slurping down a bowl of ramen. Everyone else wants a piece of his food, but since he cooked it for himself, he doesn't want to share. Instead, he shows them a piece of paper that contains the recipe for his food, and offers to cook the same ramen for the gang from scratch. With the stick figures impressed with Blue's cooking skills, Green asks Blue where he got the recipe, where he reveals he got it from the same village that had problems with titan ravagers and illagers. Blue pocketed the recipe when he was busy crafting tools for the big counterattack. Thinking they could find more cooking, the stick figures set out to find leads on the chef that created the recipe.After making it back to the village, the stick figures ask around for the village chef, all pointing to a specific house in the middle of the village. With a courteous knock, Blue and the others are invited into the chef's house and are greeted by a mouthwatering spread of food on the table, then are offered a Master Cookbook to trade. However, this villager doesn't take emeralds; he will only trade the cookbook for dishes of increasing complexity to prove themselves skilled enough to impress him. Red attempts to snitch the book from the chef, but he's keen enough to keep the stick figures' hands off his cookbook, able to defend himself with only a bunch of kitchen knives and a frying pan. The stick figures are going to have to work for it.
The first trade starts with a simple plate of pancakes, Blue demonstrating how they're made before the others give it a try. Red's pancake batter runs off the cooktop, putting too much water in his mix. Second Coming's batter has not enough water, rolling out the bowl like a ball of dough. Green gets his with just the right consistency, and the rest follow suit with the correct water to flour ratio, with Blue taking notes as he makes the syrup. Green, having a bit of an appetite, attempts to eat his pancakes, only for Blue to stop him and remind him the pancakes are for the chef. After clearing the first trade, they're given tomato seeds to grow tomatoes for pizza sauce. While the tomatoes stew, Blue mixes up pizza dough for him and the others to stretch out, and makes fresh cheese to top with before each stick figure customizes their pizza with their own toppings. Green chooses chicken, Second Coming chooses beef, Yellow tops his with tomato and basil, Red tops his with mushrooms, and Blue—unsurprisingly—tops his with netherwart. After presenting their pizzas, the final trade involves deep frying, calling for donuts, fried chicken, and a hamburger with fries. As the stick figures step out to resume cooking, the chef gives Blue's netherwart pizza a taste, reacting as one would expect from the taste of netherwart.
Pots serving as oil vats are set up to get deep frying, Green making the batter for donuts, passing it to Yellow to batter the chicken, while Red tosses in cut potatoes to make the fries. Second Coming is grinding up the beef for the hamburger patty, all while Blue continues to write down the recipes. The hamburger and fries are ready, the fried chicken is ready, but all that progress comes to a grinding halt when Green accidentally causes a grease fire from clumsily dropping a burning donut, ruining it and the oil vats. While the chicken is safe, the third donut is unfortunately an inedible piece of charred dough. Thinking they could be sneaky, Blue tries to hide the burnt donut before the chef tastes the dishes. However, the chef eventually spots the burnt donut, denying them the cookbook. While the stick figures beg for them, the chef throws them all out; no complete trade, no book. The stick figures, hungry and cookbook-less, sulk outside the chef's doorstep the entire night in the rain, not even having the will to just go home. The chef notices them still there, complete with their cooking setup still up. Knowing they put the effort to learn, the chef decides to give them a second chance.
The chef hands them three maps, pointing them to different parts of the world, each with four dishes to bring back. If they manage to present him those twelve dishes, he'll give them the cookbook. With their determination reignited, the stick figures split up to learn the regional recipes to impress the chef. Red and Green head towards the desert village that specializes in Mexican cuisine, Second Coming and Yellow take to the waters to visit a riverside village that specializes in East Asian cuisine, and Blue goes to the mountains for the village that specializes in French cuisine. With ingredients and knowledge stocked up, the stick figures head back to cook, and for Blue, fill up his notebook with the recipes. With all the recipes faithfully recreated, they're ready to present to the chef, who proceeds to taste each dish with a critical palette.
With the macarons finally giving the chef's approval, he hands Blue the Master Cookbook...'s cover. It's just the cover of a book, and there's not a single page in it. The chef reveals the cookbook never really existed, and the cookbook was actually Blue's hard work in learning everything that was presented to him, flashing back to every moment Blue had his notebook out, accompanied by the pages he wrote, down to the last flip and stir. With this revelation, Blue takes out the notes from his book and places them in the Master Cookbook cover, thus making him the writer of his own cookbook, and thanks the chef for the experience. A hungry Green steps up and decks the chef in the face for throwing them into this wild chase, then proceeds to literally feast on the fruits of his labor, with the rest (sans Blue) following suit.
Tropes:
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: When Blue is making ramen for everyone, the whole process is sped up greatly; the broth alone would normally take several hours. Alan acknowledges this in the commentary, saying he knew the whole process because his wife used to teach classes on how to make ramen, but showing it in real time would have been less entertaining.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When the villager chef demands that the stick figures leave sans cookbook after seeing the burnt doughnut, all five of them fall to their knees and beg him for the cookbook. He's unmoved and just throws them all out.
- Angry Chef: The villager chef is notably more hostile and abrasive towards the stick figures than either the other members of the same village, or those of the other three faraway villages, who all happily share their cooking with the stickmen.
- Call-Back: The episode takes place in the village from Season 3; one of the scenes has three musketeer villagers training in the background, keeping their self-defense skills sharp, one of whom Blue goes to ask for the source of the recipe.
- Chef of Iron: The villager chef is one, able to fend off the stick figures with only a bunch of kitchen utensils, and without breaking a sweat despite the stick gang having experience of fighting dangerous foes before. Blue eventually promotes himself into this, having developed his cooking skills over the course of the episode.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The three villages the stick figures split off to are essentially Minecraftian versions of Mexico, East Asia, and France, complete with popular regional recipes for the stick figures to recreate.
- Food Porn: In pixel art form! All the showcased dishes are lovingly drawn down to the last dot, with Blue's ramen having a cinematic closeup while he slurps away.
- Foreshadowing:
- The ramen recipe Blue shows his friends is labeled "Page 21 of 60", immediately indicating that there's more to come. It's also nowhere near big enough to contain all the steps Blue follows when making ramen for the others, even if it was double-sided, establishing Blue's ability to extrapolate recipes he doesn't have in front of him.
- Blue is clearly savoring his ramen, but everyone else just scarfs theirs down; this establishes that the others don't have the same appreciation for cooking that Blue does, setting up their different reactions to the It Was with You All Along twist.
- Blue is shown taking notes of everyone's cooking the entire time, setting up the ending of the episode.
- French Cuisine Is Haughty: Downplayed, but still there. Whereas the other stickmen are sent to farming villages to learn Fantasy Counterpart Culture Latin American and East Asian recipes being made by the farmer's wives, Blue is directed specifically to a suitably fancy looking restaurant full of professional chefs. That said, they're just as eager to share their recipes as everyone else, welcoming blue into their kitchen to take notes.
- Growling Gut: Heard a few times throughout the episode; first from Blue when they're first waiting for the villager chef to open the door, then from the Second Coming after they're all tossed out, and lastly from Blue again before everyone sets out to the destinations on the maps the villager chef gave them.
- Ignored Aesop: The chef teaches Blue that he was perfectly capable of creating his own Master Cookbook all along. A tired and starving Green wasn't having any of it and sucker-punches the chef's lights out before he and the others proceed to scarf down all the food they collected for the Master Cookbook trade. Notably, Blue himself doesn't join in, showing he actually appreciated the lesson that his fellows didn't.
- Hope Spot: After the stick figures hide the burnt doughnut behind the good ones, the villager chef initially falls for it, agreeing to complete the trade. Then one of the good doughnuts slips just enough to reveal the burnt one, which the villager chef notices, prompting him to reject the trade and kick everyone out.
- Improbable Weapon User: The chef utilizes a few of the items in his kitchen to take down the desperate stick gang during their first meeting, including whacking Blue out cold with his frying pan and even taking out both The Second Coming and Yellow with the Master Cookbook itself.
- It Was with You All Along: The entire Chain of Deals the villager chef put the stick figures on was one big test to teach them this, as their reward was not actually a Master Cookbook, but the cover for one. Blue takes the lesson in stride, replacing the cover of his own cookbook with the one the chef gave him. Unfortunately, the other four didn't share the same sentiment and immediately started consuming all of the food after Green socks the chef in the face due to being sent on a wild goose chase while still hungry.
- Medium Awareness: To complete the second trade, the villager chef actually reaches into the trade interface to grab the oil buckets.
- Rule of Three:
- When the stick figures ask for the cookbook from the chef, the latter gives them three cooking trials in order to obtain it, with the first trial is to cook pancakes, the second is to cook pizza, and the third consists of three meals made with frying oil: chocolate glazed donuts, fried chicken, and a burger with fries.
- During the third trial, Green accidentally burns one of the doughnuts; it turns out that they require three chocolate glazed donuts to make the meal sufficient, and the burnt one leads to the stick figures failing the trials.
- When the stick figures want a second chance from the chef, he decides to give three maps that leads to three villages that have their respective cultural dishes for them to study and cook the cuisines in order for them to make up for their loss.
- Shout-Out:
- The chef's kitchen knives and tomatoes are lifted from Farmer's Delight, a mod that adds more crops and food items to craft.
- When the chef gets knocked out at the end by a hungry Green, the pose he lands in is the Family Guy death pose
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- Shown Their Work:
- The international cuisines are given care on accurately recreating them in a Minecraft setting, complete with Blue's cookbook writing down the exact steps on how to properly create the dishes.
- The tools that serve as the cooking utensils are made with gold. Gold is a chemically inert metal, and utensils made of pure gold leaves no metallic aftertaste, ensuring the food's flavor is uncompromised.
- When Green accidentally starts a grease fire, the collateral fires are doused with water, but the flaming grease itself is put out by placing dirt blocks on top of the cauldrons. Trying to put out grease fires with water is never a good idea because it just causes flaming grease to splatter everywhere; covering the flaming pan/fryer/etc to starve it of oxygen is a better call.
- Blue making cheese just by heating milk in a furnace seems like a reach at best, but heating milk on a stovetop (with a bit of citric acid) really is part of the process of making mozzarella.
- Temporarily Exaggerated Trait: Inverted. Blue's love of nether wart to the exclusion of all other food is downplayed for the purposes of this episode. The only time it comes up is when Blue tops his pizza with it, and even then Blue doesn't partake in the pizza himself as it's a trade item.
- Tragic Mistake: Green burns one of the doughnuts needed for the final trade for the Master Cookbook, despite every other meal for the trade being created perfectly. Unfortunately, that alone is enough for the Chef to consider the deal voided, sending the stick gang into the Despair Event Horizon. However, the Chef gives them a second chance after witnessing their sorry states.
- Worf Had the Flu: Implicit. The stickmen all come at the chef with their diamond swords alone, as opposed to the more varied arsenals and fighting styles they show off when fighting more seriously, and are explicitly shown to be extremely hungry the whole time.
