Cooking vs rations/hunting is certainly unintuitive. Cooking ingredients are there just for temporary bonuses each cooked food item gives; but cooked food doesn't actually feed you! You still need rations or hunting. This is weird.

Rations/hunting is pretty clear, on the other hand. Every time you rest you need one ration per one person, so a maximum of six rations for a party of six. Hunting can be done to provide "instant rations", thus not reducing the rations you carry. If you click "use rations" and hunt, the hunter will catch what they can and the rest will be fed with rations. If you hunt without "use rations", they will hunt till they can feed everyone... this can take 10-20 hours at worst. If you click "use rations" and have nobody hunting, rest will usually take less time.

So rations/hunting is a choice between saving rations and saving time, basically.

The weird thing is that the cooked food doesn't feed your guys at all. I'd imagine eating a roast would feed you. Another weird thing is that basic D&D spells like Create Food & Water or Rope Trick have been removed from the game. They are meant for camping and resting, after all.

What irritates me is 30+pounds a day of supplies and no horses. it's far more the the weight of food and less than what water would weigh.
they also have no clue as to how you actually hunt on the trail.
You go out and fish and or set snares (potting anything larger that you run into) for the "next days" meals. Takes an hour or so with any kind of luck. you clear your snares in the morning. in the modern world we don't drink untreated water from strams and springs....but thats because we don't have to and well after a century of not doing it we're more vulnerable to "stuff". Honestly I gave ip on realism in ames a long time ago...I mean after all archers are little hi-dex twigs with low strentg...(And eaglist longbowman drew 125 lbs+ try that with a 10 STR"

Basically, hunting vs rations is trading time vs weight. Hunting takes hours, you may want to spare some of them when you're involved in a timed quest. OTOH, rations are heavy and cumbersome, so you cant' bring lots of them, say just for 2-3 dinners. +1, that's weird. Is it intentional, or may be a bug ?