So I finally got to the point of the game where I need to make the stew and I successfully found the recipe and all the ingredients again but for the life of me, I cannot find a bowl to mix them in. I know there's a bowl near the opening of the game but I don't know where I left it or indeed if I dropped it in water at some point.

I've spent several hours combing the abyss looking for a bowl but I haven't found a single one. Was that the only bowl in the game? If not, could you point me towards where I could find another?

IIRC there are several bowls. I can't recall their location, though.

I remember finding one in the Troll settlement and/or the thieves on the third level- but I could be wrong.

Try bartering with people- I remember seeing bowls offered at one point or another.

I played this few months back and I am *almost* sure that there is a bowl right in the level where you need to mix the stew.

After casting about for a while, unable to find one. I eventually downloaded an abandonware version of the game and dosbox so I could just run a save editor and give myself a bowl, cheating though it is. Immediately after doing that, I went one level down and found another bowl in the quarters of the mages, frustrating as hell.

Great game but I wish I had known going into it that there was no way to add to your carry weight after you've picked your class, would not have tried playing the game at 15 strength, I did a lot of backtracking to pick up necessary items I had to leave behind due to them weighing me down.

I beat the game with 19 strength and in hindsight the weight limit was quite annoying, but at least it was playable at 19. Anyway, there was a trick where you remove/rename certain save files, which would reset the dungeon progress and you could grab the things you had missed or lost and then you would place those files back again to restore your dungeon progress. I'm afraid I can't find any link anymore, but I used that trick to recover the rotworm stew recipe after I had thrown it away.

frivol question but has anyone actually tried making a real-life rotworm stew?
http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Rotworm_Stew

but with sea cucumbers? i can't think of any other wormy bottom-feeders humans can eat.

I always pick up the bowl that you find on the first level near the entrance of the abyss. Even my STR 17 mage was able to carry it around till she reached the area of the trolls. She was only wearing leather armor, so she was still able to carry all the important items around. No backtracking needed. But if one does not want to carry it around, there is another bowl in the area of the trolls as well.