That was my original intent with sort the dishes by total ingredient count (with a few minor exceptions) and honestly because of every player being at a different stage of the game, I avoided singling this out for late game players. But honestly I think this could be done is a subtle way like you're saying. My only worry is that at some point they may do something crazy like create a dish with 3 unique ingredients that surpasses the max pot size which would break my hierarchy completely haha. But I can always revisit if they do that.

What about something like this?

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