When your cooking pot is empty, and you put coal in it, it only smelts 1 item per coal. It should smelt 10 items per coal. It shouldn't have anything to do with the top number. Me4502 said it was just internal timing stuffs.
me4502 responded, found and fixed the issue within minutes. It was like watching a miracle before my own eyes. These developers are awesome!
When I have a cooking pot with fuel in it (let's say 1000), and I place an item to be smelted inside, it will cook like normal. Whilst cooking, the top number (line #3) will shoot up while the bottom number (how much fuel is in the pot) hits 0. Instead of stopping at 0, it will go to -1. Once to bottom number hits -1, the top number will shoot down. Whilst shooting downwards, it is still able to cook items until the top number hits a low number (10, 20, 30, 40, etc.). In this video below, 1 coal= 20 fuel. Yes, this is intended as the amount was changed in the newest build. In my next test, I had a cooking pot with a few stacks of cobblestone in it. It started out with no fuel inside. When I added fuel to the cooking pot with items already inside, it cooked 4 items per coal. Once I added more, it cooked a random number of items.
Cooking pots also nom the buckets from lava buckets and I can't get them back. (Just thought I'd include this here.)
