a number of 'FAIL' cutscenes/game-over scenes (like the chef running away on fire, or a cut off finger gushing blood, or an eater throwing up or grimacing in distaste ) which might be reused many places.

If you're interested in cooking mistakes, I have an idea.
Each step in a recipe list can have different ways to make a mistake.
In the end product, the 'mistakes' are shown, such as overcooked, too salty, too much water, etc (the image may look different, or perhaps the taste 'verdict' would be given)
This would mean you'd need to have n different possibilities for end products, n being number or steps x (each individual step's possible problem(s) +1).
Making mistakes carry over into other steps may be hard but would also add realism.

One positive to this is that you can reuse recipe steps, maybe with different variables. Maybe a database of different possible recipe steps.
'chopping' could be a step, with type of meat and optimal meat size as parameters. The 'game' portion would use the information in this class to run, and when done would get the problem (or no problem) which would be used in the end product (and maybe used as an additional input in another step).

It's a bit complicated but sort of standardizes everything.