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A review by amandasupak
Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson
4.5
4.5 stars
This book was SO interesting! I learned so many random tidbits about the history of how we used to cook. If I and a person from 400 years ago swapped places neither of us would have any clue on how to cook in the other person's kitchen haha.
This book includes
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Pots and Pans
Chapter 2 - Knife
Chapter 3 - Fire
Chapter 4 - Measure
Chapter 5 - Grind
Chapter 6 - Eat
Chapter 7 - Ice
Chapter 8 - Kitchen
Fun tidbits I learned:
- The first “pans” that were invented we're simple vessels that could be heated and also contain liquid like the stomachs of animals. People would put their food in their stomachs cook the food over the fire and then eat it. An example is haggis.
- Putting a pot of water over a fire was very non intuitive because creating and maintaining fire was a difficult process in the past, and the idea of having a pot of water that could spill and put the fire out was to be avoided. The first instance of cooking in a pot was thought to start by taking the very hot rocks from a fire in putting them in a pot full of water that was away from the fire, and letting the rocks heat up the water which you could then cook in.
- Even after we invented pans, a lot of people still like to cook and eat out of pottery because it imbued a flavor into the food.
- Short and medium grain rice are perfect for a rice cooker, but the long grain rice found in india often turn mushy under such treatment. That is likely why almost all of Asia has rice cooker culture but India does not
- In medieval Europe people would carry their own knives with them everywhere they went so that they always had a way to cut the food wherever they were eating. People would decorate or carve the handles in a way that suited their tastes, and to differentiate them from other peoples knives. People would wear their knives on their belts habitually, similar to how we wear watches all the time.
- The term curfew now means the time that someone (usually a teenagers) comes back home, but in the past it was a metal cover you placed over the embers in your hearth to contain the fire while people slept.
- The styles of cooking in Europe and China were so different because of the amount of fuel that each of them had for cooking. In Europe fuel was abundant in the form of wood, so you would often find people building large fires and roasting large pieces of meat on a spit next to the fire. In China what was more scarce so a style of wok cooking was invented out of necessity. A wok was placed over the fire, and all of the energy from the fire went directly into the pan. The European style of cooking a roast next to the fire meant that a lot of the fuel wasn't cooking anything. When the first stove was invented in Europe, it changed the way that Europeans thought about cooking because it was much more similar to the style of cooking in China, where you put a pot of food on top of a small heat source.
- It took a long time to convert people to gas stoves because they thought it would poison their food. When people finally did convert it reduced a lot of the labor of cooking because you no longer had to clean out the embers and ash out of your hearth. Electric ovens didn't really get adopted until the 1920s
- The reason why a teaspoon became very popular as a way to measure things was because it was a good balance between having enough surface area to be able to shovel enough food onto the spoon, but it then it would also fit in your mouth.
- Forks did not become popular as a utensil to eat with until the 1700s, because italians realized it was great for eating pasta. Once the fork was already being used at the table they started using it for other foods too.
- In the Shinto religion, there's a taboo against impurity. There is a belief that something that has been in someone's mouth picks up not merely germs which would be killed by washing but aspects of their personality which would not. To use a stranger's chopsticks is therefore spiritually disgusting. This explains the phenomenon of wooden disposable chopsticks. It is sometimes assumed that these are a modern western influx similar to plastic cutlery. However, they have been used ever since the beginnings of the Japanese restaurant industry in the 18th century because giving a fresh pair of chopsticks to all customers was the only way a restauranter could assure his clientele that what they put in their mouth was not defiled
This book was SO interesting! I learned so many random tidbits about the history of how we used to cook. If I and a person from 400 years ago swapped places neither of us would have any clue on how to cook in the other person's kitchen haha.
This book includes
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Pots and Pans
Chapter 2 - Knife
Chapter 3 - Fire
Chapter 4 - Measure
Chapter 5 - Grind
Chapter 6 - Eat
Chapter 7 - Ice
Chapter 8 - Kitchen
Fun tidbits I learned:
- The first “pans” that were invented we're simple vessels that could be heated and also contain liquid like the stomachs of animals. People would put their food in their stomachs cook the food over the fire and then eat it. An example is haggis.
- Putting a pot of water over a fire was very non intuitive because creating and maintaining fire was a difficult process in the past, and the idea of having a pot of water that could spill and put the fire out was to be avoided. The first instance of cooking in a pot was thought to start by taking the very hot rocks from a fire in putting them in a pot full of water that was away from the fire, and letting the rocks heat up the water which you could then cook in.
- Even after we invented pans, a lot of people still like to cook and eat out of pottery because it imbued a flavor into the food.
- Short and medium grain rice are perfect for a rice cooker, but the long grain rice found in india often turn mushy under such treatment. That is likely why almost all of Asia has rice cooker culture but India does not
- In medieval Europe people would carry their own knives with them everywhere they went so that they always had a way to cut the food wherever they were eating. People would decorate or carve the handles in a way that suited their tastes, and to differentiate them from other peoples knives. People would wear their knives on their belts habitually, similar to how we wear watches all the time.
- The term curfew now means the time that someone (usually a teenagers) comes back home, but in the past it was a metal cover you placed over the embers in your hearth to contain the fire while people slept.
- The styles of cooking in Europe and China were so different because of the amount of fuel that each of them had for cooking. In Europe fuel was abundant in the form of wood, so you would often find people building large fires and roasting large pieces of meat on a spit next to the fire. In China what was more scarce so a style of wok cooking was invented out of necessity. A wok was placed over the fire, and all of the energy from the fire went directly into the pan. The European style of cooking a roast next to the fire meant that a lot of the fuel wasn't cooking anything. When the first stove was invented in Europe, it changed the way that Europeans thought about cooking because it was much more similar to the style of cooking in China, where you put a pot of food on top of a small heat source.
- It took a long time to convert people to gas stoves because they thought it would poison their food. When people finally did convert it reduced a lot of the labor of cooking because you no longer had to clean out the embers and ash out of your hearth. Electric ovens didn't really get adopted until the 1920s
- The reason why a teaspoon became very popular as a way to measure things was because it was a good balance between having enough surface area to be able to shovel enough food onto the spoon, but it then it would also fit in your mouth.
- Forks did not become popular as a utensil to eat with until the 1700s, because italians realized it was great for eating pasta. Once the fork was already being used at the table they started using it for other foods too.
- In the Shinto religion, there's a taboo against impurity. There is a belief that something that has been in someone's mouth picks up not merely germs which would be killed by washing but aspects of their personality which would not. To use a stranger's chopsticks is therefore spiritually disgusting. This explains the phenomenon of wooden disposable chopsticks. It is sometimes assumed that these are a modern western influx similar to plastic cutlery. However, they have been used ever since the beginnings of the Japanese restaurant industry in the 18th century because giving a fresh pair of chopsticks to all customers was the only way a restauranter could assure his clientele that what they put in their mouth was not defiled