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. -- Publisher Marketing
