Culinary abilities

[AryaRegina]

A skill in cooking is not something expected in a book series focused on characters of the nobility, despite the big focus on food, but there are still a couple characters who we see cook  (excluding the servants and professional cooks):

Arya

There was a big kitchen inside the holdfast, though all the pots and kettles had been taken. Gendry, Dobber, and Arya drew cook duty. Dobber told Arya to pluck the fowl while Gendry split wood. “Why can’t I split the wood?” she asked, but no one listened. Sullenly, she set to plucking a chicken while Yoren sat on the end of the bench sharpening the edge of his dirk with a whetstone.  
-ACOK, Arya IV

Hot Pie was stirring the kettles with a long wooden spoon when Arya returned to the kitchens. She grabbed up a second spoon and started to help. For a moment she thought maybe she should tell him, but then she remembered the village and decided not to. He’d only yield again.
-ACOK, Arya IX

She got along well enough with the cook. Umma would slap a knife into her hand and point at an onion, and Arya would chop it. Umma would shove her toward a mound of dough, and Arya would knead it until the cook said stop (stop was the first Braavosi word she learned). Umma would hand her a fish, and Arya would bone it and fillet it and roll it in the nuts the cook was crushing.
-AFFC, Arya II

Some days she still helped Umma cook, chopping big white mushrooms and boning fish.
-AFFC, Cat of the Canals

Without eyes, even the simplest task was perilous. She burned herself a dozen times as she worked with Umma in the kitchens. Once, chopping onions, she cut her finger down to the bone.
-ADWD, The Blind Girl

And according to a SSM, she would enjoy making cheese:
[Are highborn ladies trained to a lot of practical things, like serving guests, making cheese, and so on?]H

Sansa is more than just a young lady. She’s the daughter, not just of a noble, but of one of the most powerful nobles in Westeros. The great houses stand far above the lesser nobles, as the lesser nobles do above the smallfolk.

She would not make cheese, no. But Arya might think it would be fun.
-GRRM, (x)
 

Bran

Jojen sent Hodor out for wood and built them a small fire while Bran and Meera were cleaning the fish and frogs. They used Meera's helm for a cooking pot, chopping up the catch into little cubes and tossing in some water and some wild onions Hodor had found to make a froggy stew. It wasn't as good as deer, but it wasn't bad either, Bran decided as he ate. "Thank you, Meera," he said. "My lady."
-Bran I, ASOS

Brienne

The homely young woman had kept to herself all through their journey, spending most of her time with the horses, brushing out their coats and pulling stones from their shoes. She had helped Shadd cook and clean game as well, and soon proved that she could hunt as well as any. Any task Catelyn asked her to turn her hand to, Brienne had performed deftly and without complaint, and when she was spoken to she answered politely, but she never chattered, nor wept, nor laughed.
-Catelyn V, ACOK

Jon

Jon spitted the carcass, banked the fire with a pair of rocks, and balanced their meal atop them. The rabbit had been a scrawny thing, but as it cooked it smelled like a king's feast. Other rangers gave them envious looks. Even Ghost looked up hungrily, flames shining in his red eyes as he sniffed. "You had yours before," Jon reminded him.
-Jon III, ACOK

Meera

Jojen sent Hodor out for wood and built them a small fire while Bran and Meera were cleaning the fish and frogs. They used Meera's helm for a cooking pot, chopping up the catch into little cubes and tossing in some water and some wild onions Hodor had found to make a froggy stew. It wasn't as good as deer, but it wasn't bad either, Bran decided as he ate. "Thank you, Meera," he said. "My lady."
-Bran I, ASOS

Meera Reed was turning a chunk of raw red flesh above the flames, letting it char and spit.
(...)
Meera turned the meat to cook the other side.
-Bran I, ADWD
 

Sam

If truth be told, Sam was so fumble-fingered that he doubted he was even doing the work of one good man, but he did try. He scrubbed decks and rubbed them smooth with stones, he hauled on anchor chains, he coiled rope and hunted rats, he sewed up torn sails, patched leaks with bubbling hot tar, boned fish and chopped fruit for the cook.
-Samwell IV, AFFC

Any characters I missed?
Are there any characters you're surprised are able to cook?
Any character you think should have been able to do so? Or some where it's implied they're able, but that we don't see them do it?
Will this skill become useful for these characters in the winter just around the corner? For some other plot? Or is it a skill simply added for variety, without any significance?

[James Arryn]

George LOVES writing about food. It’s a running Alt ShiftX/Schwift X joke. 

[James West]

On 4/27/2022 at 5:20 PM, AryaRegina said:

A skill in cooking is not something expected in a book series focused on characters of the nobility, despite the big focus on food, but there are still a couple characters who we see cook  (excluding the servants and professional cooks):
 

 

Any characters I missed?
Are there any characters you're surprised are able to cook?
Any character you think should have been able to do so? Or some where it's implied they're able, but that we don't see them do it?
Will this skill become useful for these characters in the winter just around the corner? For some other plot? Or is it a skill simply added for variety, without any significance?

1. The most Noble of them all, Drogon.  What skill with fire he has.  This gourmet loves his food well-done as we see from the litter of charred bones in his lair in the middle of the Dothraki Sea.  I love the dragon.  He easily makes my list of 5 favorite characters. 
2. Stannis Baratheon cooked his own men for eating the dead.
3. Mellissandre cooks leeches.  God knows what else she cooks off-page. 

[Seams]

On 4/27/2022 at 5:20 PM, AryaRegina said:

Any characters I missed?

Hard to say whether Tyrion is a cook. Here are some conflicting bits of evidence.

Her teeth were crooked, which made her shy with her smiles, but she smiled now. "Did you truly cook a singer in a stew?"

"Who, me? No. I do not cook."

(Dance, Tyrion VIII)

Why did Ser Jorah hit you so hard?"

"Why, for love. The same reason that I stewed that singer."

(Dance, Tyrion IX)

"Five thousand is an insult!" Tyrion called out. "I joust, I sing, I say amusing things. I'll fuck your wife and make her scream. Or your enemy's wife if you prefer, what better way to shame him? I'm murder with a crossbow, and men three times my size quail and tremble when we meet across a cyvasse table. I have even been known to cook from time to time. I bid ten thousand silvers for myself! I'm good for it, I am, I am. My father told me I must always pay my debts."

(Dance, Tyrion X)

On board the Selaesori Qhoran, Tyrion plays a lot of cyvasse with the ship's cook, even though he comes to despise the man. The fact that this man plays the game associated with a central motif of the books (the "game" of thrones) makes me think that he is some kind of foil for Tyrion; maybe even a reflection of Tyrion. The captain of the cog died a day after the storm, after being flung from the stern castle to the deck and breaking both legs. (Like Bran?) The ship's cook dies three days after the storm at sea, when he is blinded by a pan of hot grease that hits him in the face. The cook's death doesn't seem parallel to any other deaths we have seen, unless it is compared to characters who have had a blast of dragon fire in their faces. I did think that Kraznys mo Nakloz, who sells the Unsullied to Dany, might be a symbolic King Aerys. Since he was killed by dragon fire in his face, maybe the cook is another symbolic King Aerys. This would explain why he plays cyvasse, a game for kings and would-be kings. 

I am currently trying to notice characters who make stews, both literal and figurative, as I believe Arya is making a "stew" when she throws a bunch of stuff in the canal. The cook on the Selaesori Qhoran is always called "the ship's cook," which lead me to wonder whether the ship is a stew pot and the people, pig, dog, acorns, Moqorro's "fingers" and other elements in it are the stew. 

[Springwatch]

Barristan:    "I can bake apples and boil beef as well as any man, and I've roasted many a duck over a campfire. I hope you like them greasy, with charred skin and bloody bones."

Food codes. Got to be.

ETA

A mention also for the meal planners Arianne and Cersei. (ETA2: and Amerei!) But not Dany (not that we see anyway), though she is often concerned with feeding her people.