Cooking Suggestions?

I recently capped Cooking to 72, after making a bajillion Pear Au Laits, and am looking for any suggestions to get to 100. So far I have the following items somewhat planned out:

75-Dhalmel Pie
80-Shallops Tropicale (maybe for a level or 2)
81-Pamama Au Lait
86-Marron Glace

That's as far as I've gotten. I'm looking for synths that have (mostly) vendor gotten ingredients that aren't too rough on the wallet, that I can at least break even on whether through selling on A.H. or npc'ing (obviously prefer NPC to A.H. if possible). I don't have any cooking key items yet (working on getting raw fish handling atm but had to take a break to make some more money). I'm not looking to make money off this right now, just wanna cap it out so I can make any food and drinks I wanna use myself and save me some gil.

So yeah, any suggestions?

I leveled Cooking during the height of the inflation and farmed most of my fire crystals off elementals in sky as BLM. And I made mostly stuff that was dirt cheap from NPCs.

A few foods I'd look into:
Colored Eggs
Orange Kuchen
Rice Dumplings (level WW for making maple sugar when it's not available from NPCs)
various Pies

Yea.... I'm in the same boat as you man. Just hit 74(mule) on Dhalmel Pies. Want to try to hit 75 with them but just to get 74 I made 20 stacks, the sell rate is not as great as I hoped. That being said, it will prob. take another 10 stacks or less to hit 75... Anyways, I will end up doing Narvarin (77) to cap (it don't stack:() after that i will make the big jump with Yellow curry (85) because i farm Coeurl alot. Of corse i will have support from guild. I will prob do Yellow curry until 82 and start on Marron Glace.(86) Why you ask? Because it's less mats to deal with and that's how i like to keep it. After all that I have not maped my route farther due to no key items from guild. PL-ing has its down falls lol^^ (0-74 in 6 days) Good luck and if you have any ideas post please.

PS... I'm still trying to get rid of all the da#m yag drinks from 55-60 >.> 120+ of them

I think I made sushi through most of 70's and 80's, had a friend who sold me cheap fish, otherwise sushi isnt the most ecomonical choice when it comes to skillups.

Crystals are not an issue...I level a lot in a lot of different areas so I pretty much always have whatever crystals I need on hand. I've been trying to take a break on non-stacking synths (hence the Dhalmel Pies) but the mats are rough so prolly gonna only use that to bridge the gap to the pamamas au lait (maybe a level or two). My LS offered to buy some Dhalmel Pies from me at cost so at least it wont cost me anything for the first few stacks I make...

Thanks for the suggestion about the fish, I don't have raw fish handling yet though, have to take a break and make some more gil before I dump it into guild points. Halfway there, though, and I fully intend to get into sushi making at some point, been leveling fishing up to go with cooking but that's about as fun as camping lizzie for the leaping boots, it's slooooow going lol...

Anyone have any suggestions after Marron Glace? Took a look at it the other day but nothing really jumped out at me, and everything looks rough in the 90's ^^

Know what you mean, man...it took me over a MONTH to unload all my San d'Orian teas, with 2 chars unloading them :(

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Wiegraf%27s_Guide_To_Synthesis:_Cooking

I have been following Wiegraf guide alot, great guide btw and thank you for posting it. But... I dont quite agree with your Goblin Drink synth only because im not a fisherman. No way in hel% im going to carpenders landing for fish, also these fish dont stack, so even more of a pain.I always say if im going to fish I will get a pole irl and hit the pond. That is why I chose Dhalmel pies until 75 cap. On top of that I'm doing cooking on a lvl 5 whm mule lol... Other then that awesome guide thus far. Oh and just want to say I'm not going to do the Pamama Au Lait because I dont want to wait a month to sell them off mules, I ended up npcing the Pear ones so, also not a fan of honey^^

Yeah, Dhalmel Pie's turned out better than I thought. Had to buy the Coral Fungus off the A.H. which sux (does anyone ever really take Movapolis? Never seen it not under Beastmen control lol) but the pies actually sold on the AH pretty quick. I'm thinking it's time for me to get into gardening...

And yeah, fishing blows. Spent 15 hours total to get level 8 fishing in Ronfaure...yay. On the plus side, I'm only 9,500 moat carp away from Lu Shangs lol...

On Valefor it's cheaper to buy the Coral Fungus off the AH think I got it for 3.5k a stack which npc sells for what 1k for single? So thats what i did, also seen alot of stack in Bastok but had to pay 7k for a stack but still cheaper then the npc. Black pepper is my issue atm to get cooking 75 the npc is 986 for singles fk that.. I'm 74 atm might just skip to Shallops Tropicale... side note, the Pies worked out great made a profit and sold nearly every stack in just 1 day was very shocked~!

On Fairy fungus goes for between 7k-9k, only problem is there's only ever like 1 stack for sale at a time, so miss out on lots of firesday's I could be skilling up on, never anything worth a damn in the starter cities, Fairy is seriously so fking broken at times trying to get AH stuff...the fish I needed at one point for skillups (Herring I think) like never sold ANYWHERE EVER.

Black Pepper is ok for me, I get it from the Tenshodo Merchant in Lower Jeuno for 190 each...maybe related to your Norg fame? You ever do the yag bead quest? It's a pita but worth it at least for getting all the honey and beehive chips from the bees in Giddeus while you're farming yagudo. That's what I did anyways...ended up with tons of honey and chips out of the deal to stockpile, beehive chips are like 4k a stack on ah so rather farm them since I had to be doing that crap anyways for Utsusemi: Ichi. You need like 200 of the beads anyways so obviously you're gonna be doing lotsa Giddeus runs lol...

Oh well, back to making my pies, if anyone sells more fungus that is

Na I have max norg fame, but I have been buying with a mule in Tenshodo, so your prob. right about the fame issue, the mule has none. I have been keeping my main char in sandy due to the mats needed there alot. Guess i will stop being lazy and go to Tenshodo with my main lol. Anyway just hit 75.4 today jumped to Shallops Tropicale. I made 40 or so of them for 1.4 skill kind of annoying. Now I have to play the waiting game and wait for them to sell to have inventory back..

Look for crafting something that sells quickly and is easy to get the items to make it. Each server is different but think of it this way: People will always need sushi, au lauts (hp regen drinks), mp refresh drinks, coeurls sub.

That will get you to the low 90's. From there good luck, make a friend with someone who's LS selling dragon meat and make Red curry. My LS was kind enough to sell them directly to me at a discount back in the old days.

This is what I did from 70 to 100 but keep in mind it might not be the smartest idea on your server.

-Pear Aulaut 72 cap
-Navarin 77 cap
-Pamama aulaut 81 cap
-Marron glance 86 cap
-Rolanberry pie 90 cap
-Dorado sushi 93 cap (yes sushi, I only broke like 10 synths at most, its only 3 levels and with support thats easy to cover)
-rice dumplings 95 cap (with wood 15 sub, don't really need WW sub if you don't mind tossing gil on breaks but you still skill up without it)

96+ gets expensive or hard to find mats for. I farmed my own king truffles and did Sea Bass Croute to 97. They sold fast and I made a profit.

97-100 I did a combination of Cursed Soup and Red Curry. Don't synth Red curry without support though in my opinion.

I honestly made a good deal of gil back in the old days synthing Red Curry. It was like 100k for items and sold for 150k each. Only broke 10 times max but the 50k profit each success easily covered that then.

Hedgehog Pie (94) If you farm the truffle and buffalo meat yourself, you'd make a good profit from these as well. Breaking synths wouldnt matter too much either, since the rest of the ingreds are cheap. And they sell fast, atleast on my server @ around 13 k each. Not stackable though.

Grain seeds and Light crystals will grow a stack or so of Coral Fungus too, iirc. You'll also get tarutaru rice which is what I would be aiming for when I grew mine though. ;)

Shallops Tropical not selling well :( KEEP to Pamama Au Lait trust me....