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

by Bee Wilson

Food is the great human universal.

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.

Culinary knives have always been just a step away from weapons. These are tools designed to break, disfigure, and mutilate, even if all you are cutting is a carrot. Unlike lions, we lack the ability to tear meat from a carcass with our bare teeth;

Once, though, effective handling of a knife was a more basic and necessary skill than either reading or writing.