Spicy stew

Spicy stews are normal stews with special spices from Evil Dave added to the stew. They are members' only and can temporarily increase or decrease a player's skill levels.

Spicy stews are available only to those who have started the Recipe for Disaster quest, and have completed to the Evil Dave subquest.

Making the spicy stew

 * First get a regular stew by cooking or buying. Stew may be bought in Seer's village at the Forester's Arms Pub for 20 coins. It can also be purchased in the Warrior's guild from the food shop. This saves a lot of time.
 * Get the spices:
 * Go to Evil Dave's basement in the house west of the Edgeville bank
 * Get a cat (or hellcat) to chase the hellrats
 * When the cat successfully captures a hellrat, it will drop a spice shaker, one of 4 colours, which may have up to 4 doses of that colour in them.
 * Add up to 3 doses of a colour spice to the regular stew to get a spicy stew.

Skills affected
A spicy stew can temporarily boost or lower skill levels. The colours will determine what skills will be affected by the stew as determined in the table.

Skill gain or loss
The doses will determine how much a skill will gain or lose as noted in the table. This is the maximum number of level gain or loss. For example, if the number is 6, the gain/loss may be any number between 0 and 6.

A player can also try putting 3 doses of each colour in to get an extremely variable stew.

Eating multiple stews
Only one stew can be made at a time, but the player can have several normal stews in their inventory along with several spices, and mix the next one after consuming the previously made spicy stew.

As with all player temporary skill boosts, the spicy stew will not boost higher than the player's natural skill level plus the boost amount. However, the negative boosts can keep taking the players skill level down.

For example, if the player starts with a skill level of 50, and takes several spicy stews the effects could be something like:

Due to this, it is advised to also carry several lesser stat-boosting items to neutralize the effect of negative stews. When using this technique it may also be useful to use a stat-boosting summoning familiar to save inventory spaces (such as a Bloated leech + Blood drain scrolls).

This boost gain limitation also applies to other player temporary boosts. However, some other boosts will stack with spicy stews, although not many. Crystal saws boost Construction level by three levels when building most constructed items, and can be used with spicy stews for a maximum possible boost of +9. Tea, which can give an additional up to +3, will not stack as food item boosts will not work with each other, however tea makes a very good construction stat recovery.

Important note: A +5 boost (~1 in 10 3-dose stews) is much more common than a +6 boost,(~1 in 30+ 3-dose stews), however it is still fairly rare. If you're aiming for a +6 boost, consider training the extra level as it may very well take longer to obtain the spices needed.

Trivia

 * As of 11 June 2008, Knowledge Base has Firemaking incorrectly listed under Brown spice while it should be under Orange spice, and does not specify which spice is used for Summoning. It is widely considered the stew cannot be used to boost Summoning. No player has been able to do so.
 * Only one spicy stew can be made at a time, and there are four types of spice that can be added to a stew.
 * Spicy stews, and the four types of spice, are non-tradeable.
 * The spices are all earth-colored.
 * The +6 boost is the rarest bonus to get for any spicy stew. A zero boost (no bonus) is by comparison pretty common.