So, presently, Abyssalcraft for little apparent reason adds iron plates - ordinary made-from-just-iron plates - that you can combine with mundane food items to transmute them into stuff that pretty much just 100%s your hunger and saturation in exchange for a little more busywork cleaning the plates afterward. Except for Beef on a Plate, which is actually worse than steak rather than doubling the values like the others appear to do.

To be blunt, I am not a fan of this. With the saturation-regeneration factor, this is a lot of benefit for what seems to be a perplexingly arbitrary cost: slapping your food down on a plate and pretending you're a person. Also the plates themselves feel like recipe bloat.

However, I have a fondness for cooking stuff, especially weird stuff, and I think there's potential for this direction. Instead of the plates...what if you could create meals of Shoggothflesh and other unnatural vittles? Something like, each realm's Shoggoths are progressively more nourishing/transformative: first just high saturation and replenishment, then +waterbreathing and nightvision, then +strength, then +regeneration. I'm trying to think what you could add that would keep it renewable but more complicated than just Silk-Touching some Biomass and having yourself a grinder party. Maybe milk, for its purifying properties, and mushrooms, because mushrooms are fun.

Cook up the unique flesh of Abyssalcraft zombies and ghouls in a manner similar to the extant regular-zombie-eating mods around. Learn to hunt and eat feral Remnants from hidden bone-and-journal-strewn caves in Omothol, or the civilized ones if you're feeling monstrous. Perhaps under the effects of Abyssal repasts certain magics are more responsive, or you regenerate Potential in the same way regular food helps you to regenerate health. Maybe Shoggoths recognize you as their own if you've recently devoured the flesh of stronger shoggoths, allowing you to take some of their biomass for use in a horrific home security system or to bucket them for ooze. Etc.

Sounds delicious. Plates do seem a bit detached from the rest of the mod.
But I think Shinoow is currently working on some other stuff. But someday I hope to eat some Eldritch Muffins.

Some potion effect ideas I thought up on the spot:

X-ray eyes
Prevents blindness.
If Shinoow decides to bring it back to Darklands biomes.

Essence Collector
All Rending staves deal +1 damage.

Coralium Fungus
Let's you grow Coralium... on your own body!
Works just like the Coralium Plague, but once it's duration (naturally) runs out, you will get some Coralium.
Of course curing it manually with milk would kill the poor fungus.

This suggestion makes me think of the latest run of Doctor Strange in the comics. A side effect of channeling all the arcane energies that Doctor Strange employs is that his body has altered to require more "uncommon" types of food.

This is a more fun way of putting it (from a variant cover I believe) but conveys a sense of what I am referring to.

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/0/40/4794658-doctor_strange_1_young_variant.jpg

At some point in the comics, (spoilers)

The Sanctum Santorum is attacked and one (or more) of the invading force is taken out by whatever sort of horrors are locked up in the fridge. Things that at one point Wong throws into a skillet to cook up something for Doctor Strange to eat.

From a gameplay perspective, this would function similar to the Thaumcraft effect that drains hunger unless you eat a certain amount of rotten flesh. Though I would suggest making it so that only these sort of items are the only way to replenish hunger.

Also, if a way to make the act of having raw food in your inventory dangerous, that would be even more interesting. Perhaps there is a x% chance every Y ticks that if you have one of these items raw in your inventory (or even standard, non secured inventory. Like a vanilla chest) it has a chance of deteriorating and spawning whatever horror it was before.

Looks like an interesting mechanic. 👍