num_pages: 327
description: Technology in the kitchen does not just mean the Pacojets and sous-vide of the modernist kitchen. It can also mean the humbler tools of everyday cooking and eating: a wooden spoon and a skillet chopsticks and forks.Since prehistory humans have braved sharp knives fire and grindstones to transform raw ingredients into something delicious - or at least edible. Tools shape what we eat but they have also transformed how we consume and how we think about our food. Technology in the kitchen does not just mean the Pacojets and sous-vide of the modernist kitchen. It can also mean the humbler tools of everyday cooking and eating: a wooden spoon and a skillet chopsticks and forks. In Consider the Fork award-winning food writer Bee Wilson provides a wonderful and witty tour of the evolution of cooking around the world revealing the hidden history of everyday objects we often take for granted. Knives - perhaps our most important gastronomic tool - predate the discovery of fire whereas the fork endured centuries of ridicule before gaining widespread acceptance; pots and pans have been around for millennia while plates are a relatively recent invention. Many once-new technologies have become essential elements of any well-stocked kitchen - mortars and pestles serrated knives stainless steel pots refrigerators. Others have proved only passing fancies or were supplanted by better technologies; one would be hard pressed now to find a water-powered egg whisk a magnet-operated spit roaster a cider owl or a turnspit dog. Although many tools have disappeared from the modern kitchen they have left us with traditions tastes and even physical characteristics that we would never have possessed otherwise. Blending history science and anthropology Wilson reveals how our culinary tools and tricks came to be and how their influence has shaped modern food culture. The story of how we have tamed fire and ice and wielded whisks spoons and graters all for the sake of putting food in our mouths Consider the Fork is truly a book to savor.
language: English
title: Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat
publisher: Basic Books