Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat

by Bee Wilson

there is just as much invention in a nut-cracker as in a bullet.

The word technology comes from the Greek. Techne means an art, skill, or craft, and logia means the study of something.

The things that make the biggest difference are the tools we use.

Until Fairly recently climate was up there

The foods we eat speak of the time and the place we inhabit.

Sometimes, kitchen tools are simply a way of enhancing the pleasure of eating. But they can also be a matter of basic survival.

The most versatile technologies are often the most basic.

Cooks are conservative beings, masters of quiet repetitive actions that change little from day to day or year to year.

a quickly made wok-cooked meal was originally the product of firewood scarcity.

Every new technology represents a trade-off: something is gained, but something is also lost.

The knowledge that I can make hollandaise in thirty seconds in the blender enhances the pleasure of doing it the old way, with a double boiler and a wooden spoon, the butter added to the yolks piece by tiny piece.

Kitchen tools do not emerge in isolation, but in clusters.

Kitchen gizmos offer a fascinating glimpse into the preoccupations of any given society.

Technology is the art of the possible.

The birth of a new gadget often gives rise to zealous overuse, until the novelty wears off.

Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

Just because a technology is there doesn’t mean we have to use it.

In extremis, a skilled cook could manage pretty well with nothing but a sharp knife, a wooden board, a skillet, a spoon, and some kind of heat source.

We will never get beyond the technology of cooking itself.

Pots mark the leap from mere heating to cuisine:

Historically, the earliest cooking was roasting or barbecuing.

The first conscious acts of boiling took great invention. To make a vessel for cooking when there was none before is a feat of huge creativity.

Pots suddenly become common around 10,000 BC, or a bit before, in South America and North Africa, and among the Jomon people of Japan.

Pots thus worked in tandem with the new science of agriculture (which also emerged around 10,000 years ago) to change our diet forever.

A typical modest medieval household owned a knife, a ladle, an earthenware pan, perhaps a spit of some sort, and a cauldron.

European folklore is haunted by the specter of the empty cauldron. It is the old equivalent of the empty fridge: a symbol of outright hunger.

One-pot cookery is a cuisine of scarcity: scarce fuel, scarce utensils, scarce ingredients. Nothing is wasted. It is no coincidence that food for the relief of poverty has almost always taken the form of soup. If there is not enough to go around, you can always add some more water and bubble it up one more time.

“A little pot is soon hot.” This saying, popular in Victorian times, is certainly true.

there is no such thing a perfect metal for pots.”

Temperature uniformity (my translation: Will it even out heat spots?) 2. Reactivity and toxicity (Will it poison me?) 3. Hardness (Will it dent?) 4. Simple strength (Will it survive being dropped?) 5. Low stick rating (Will my dinner get glued on?) 6. Ease of maintenance (Will it wash easily?) 7. Efficiency (Does it conduct heat well vertically through the base?) 8. Weight (Can I lift it?) 9. Cost per unit (Can I afford it?)

There’s a very easy way to check for hot spots in your own pans. Just sprinkle plain flour over the surface of a pan and put it over a medium-high heat.

It turns out that some of the many things we want from a pan are simply incompatible.

berries and lettuce stay fresher for longer in the fridge if you first plunge them in warm water,

The ideal pan—like the ideal home—does not exist.

Pots have never been perfect, nor do they need to be.

ELECTRIC RICE COOKERS ARRIVED IN Japanese and Korean homes in the 1960s,

The first automated rice cooker was launched by Toshiba in 1956.

In 1964, less than ten years later, the rate of rice-cooker ownership in Japan was 88 percent.

Kitchens are places of violence.

The knife is the oldest tool in the cook’s armory, older than the management of fire by somewhere between 1 million and 2 million years, depending on which anthropologist you believe.

A sixth-century text (St. Benedict’s Rule) reminded monks to detach their knives from their belts before they went to bed, so they didn’t cut themselves in the night.

Professional haute cuisine was founded on specialism.

Our food is shaped by knives.

Santoku means “three uses,” so named because a santoku is equally good at cutting meat, chopping vegetables, and slicing fish.

the best Chinese kitchen would extract the maximum cooking potential from the minimum number of utensils.

From ancient times, the great characteristic of Chinese cookery was the intermingling of flavors through fine chopping. The tou made this possible.

It is the technique, above all, that makes a meal Chinese or not.

Table knives are viewed as unnecessary and also slightly disgusting in China. To cut food at the table is regarded as a form of butchery.

It takes a civilization in an advanced state of politesse—or passive aggression—to devise on purpose a knife that does a worse job of cutting.

In 1669, cutlers were forbidden by the next king, Louis XIV, from forging pointed dinner knives in France.

By the eighteenth century, polite Westerners sat at the dinner table delicately holding their pretty little knives, trying to avoid at all cost any gesture reminiscent of violence or menace.