The Cooking trade skill in New World requires a whole lot of different ingredients that can't be collected using gathering skills such as Harvesting or Gathering.
Instead, you'll have to search for Provisions Crates, Provisions Stockpiles and Food Supply Carts, chests which are generally found in buildings and around farms.
Whether fresh fruit and vegetables, base foods such as rice, or additions like salt and sugar, here's what you can get and in which regions you'll find them.
Note that all of these ingredients, with the exception of Milk, cannot be found in harvesting or gathering nodes. You'll just need to keep opening crates and stockpiles in the hope of them dropping, and there's no surefire way to guarantee a specific item.
A good way to track chest drops is to use one of the interactive maps that exist for New World. For example, the MapGenie service allows you to select or deselect categories.
In this case, you'll want to select the Provisions tab, and then Minor Chest and Large Chest. When you hover over the node on the interactive map, it will display the type of chest it is. You're looking for Provisions and Food Supply Carts.
Naturally, it's a good idea to open every chest you see, but if you're looking for something specific make sure you look up the general area in which you'll find it and refine your search. Otherwise, you could spend hours and hours looking for just a handful of a particular item.
For herbs and spices, we've put together a separate guide which you can find at this link.
