I hadn't paid much attention to that but you're right. It seems like all of the cooked foods should offer some sort of improvement over the ingredients they use but meat soup is the only one that offers much of a benefit. Fish offers no benefit at all if you cook it. Seems like that should be tweaked a bit or at least add some more worthwhile, advanced recipes later. Maybe add something like spices that can be added with the effect that it's considered to be liked by everyone no matter what's in it.
Cooking needs help. I find it an enormous time sink considering I could be having a slave gather 100 fish rather than cooking a few meals. I haven't built it up yet but the beer or whiskey recipes look promising if you have a local grain gathering person...but it's just to convert to gold anyway?? That and the fact that grain require processing before you can eat it?
IMO cook job should give an overall bonus to the operation since we can assume without it the staff are having to cook their own meals which takes time out of their assigned jobs and is substandard compared to a professional doing it. They should also be able to craft food items during leftover time(And I do think there should be some sort of calculation for the cook(s) on duty serving 5 vs serving 30).
Since this is a work in progress we can assume these things will be rebalanced, but it's a chore to figure out strategies to work around the things that aren't working currently. The fact that there is no constant starting job for Phys growth, a lack of a Social job(Dance in the previous version) and no library means you do most of the stat raising via dates, which are currently maxed at 1 per day(and would probably be unbalanced if the MC could get 30-50 stat points a day). All of these things can be considered workable but awkward, which breaks immersion.