Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat
Original price was: $18.99.$10.69Current price is: $10.69.
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Since prehistory, humans have braved sharp knives, fire, and grindstones to transform raw ingredients into something delicious—or at least edible. But these tools have also transformed how we consume, and how we think about, our food. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer Bee Wilson takes readers on a wonderful and witty tour of the evolution of cooking around the world, revealing the hidden history of objects we often take for granted. Technology in the kitchen does not just mean the Pacojets and sous-vide machines of the modern kitchen but also the humbler tools of everyday cooking and eating: a wooden spoon and a skillet, chopsticks and forks. Blending history, science, and personal anecdotes, Wilson reveals how our culinary tools and tricks came to be and how their influence has shaped food culture today. 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.
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908 reviews for Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat
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Original price was: $18.99.$10.69Current price is: $10.69.
Bill, in BC –
The author has a good mix of history and modernity, with loads of information, some of which is based on personal anecdotes. A great read.
Caddis Nymph, Western Massachusetts –
If you’re interesting in cooking, this is the book for you. Didn’t know that mortar and pestles have been around for 20,000 years? True, apparently. The overbite that humans have? Only 200-250 years since that developed; before that, top teeth met bottom teeth in the front of the mouth to make tearing meat from the bone directly more efficient. Changes in eating habits made for changes to the jaw. Amazing.
Anyway, great info about food preparation through the ages, development of kitchen gizmos and labor-saving devices (especially once slaves and indentured labor disappeared from homes of the wealthy). Neat info like Americans are the only cooks in the world to use measuring cups and measuring spoons; everyone else measures in their hand or with their fingers (just a pinch) … who knew? And some measure by weighing each ingredient, apparently much more exact.
Charmingly written, like having a conversation, though a bit more editorial attention would have been helpful. A few words are glitched almost as though the ebook was scanned from a print copy, but howlers like the following show up every once in a while:
“This whirling mechanism was a big improvement on quern still took two the basic quern, but a large rotary women to operate, one to feed in the grain and one to keep turning it.” Huh? I swear I read that six times and still can’t figure out what it might have been originally, how many sentences are jumbled together, or what. (‘Quern’ I got because it’s explained elsewhere – it’s the bottom part of a circular grain mill against which the upper stone is rotated to grind the grain.)
So, I recommend the book despite the few puzzles that appear here and there. Graphically excellent, illustrations are crisp and clear (though I don’t understand why fractions are sometimes displayed as graphics; one doesn’t need a picture of 7/16″ when the numerals as text are fine; typographically okay, formatted fine on my Kindle Keyboard.
Jeanne B. –
I couldn’t put this book down. The history of cooking equipment is at least as interesting as the history of cooking itself. I will never look at my kitchen the same way again. We may sometimes see cooking as a chore today, but the descriptions in the book of how egg whites were beaten into stiff peaks before the advent of the electric mixer makes my arms hurt just reading it. Or the thought of servants who spent their lives turning meat on a spit – the amount of human sweat that went into the preparation of a meal (in a wealthy household) is unimaginable today. I also have a new-found appreciation for my refrigerator after reading this book. We take it for granted that we can keep food fresh for days or weeks, but less than a hundred years ago anything perishable had to be eaten immediately.
Bee Wilson has a casual and easy-to-read writing style. She is refreshingly unpretentious, and her love of cooking shines through to the reader. I’m glad she took the time to research and write about a subject that you don’t often hear about.
AlexandraM –
I had bought first the Italian version of this book as a gift for a family member. Then I was curious and bought it also for myself.
It has been a pleasure reading it: very nice and flowing style that doesn’t make you nauseous when reading of food. A nice mix of history of food and how, in consequence, men created food tools.
As a suggestion, I would have loved to see images of certain tools that are not really common around the world.
careful –
Well written and researched. It was interesting to see the development of how people have cooked and why they did it the ways they did.
Just after reading it, I visited a 15th C historic house and what I had read about made what I saw in the kitchen and how it was laid out really come to life.
New Leaf –
This is the kind of book one needs to read in small doses to absorb all the details.
Related to this I recommend these books:
1. ‘At Home: A short history of private life’ by Bill Bryson
2. ‘A History of the World in 6 Glasses’ by Tom Standage
3. ‘Food in History’ by Reay Tannahill
4. ‘Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation’ by Michael Pollan
5. ‘Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind’ by Henry Hobhouse
Rebecca –
Bought this for father in law and he found this book perfectly balanced between story and factual historical information about how we in the modern age have benefited from age old methods. He particularly loved telling us how this book told him about when man created the pickling of food version and how they came about sealing products in jars and tins for the men in the army and how that came about and how the story unfolds that the tin opener wasn’t invented until some 100+ years later but now the tin opener is practically obsolete as we have created both electronic tin opener and a ring pull top. He would definitely recommend this book, can’t wait to order another book for him.
pbk63 –
If you enjoy cooking ….or just enjoy eating….this book is a fun and entertaining read. But it is also far more than that. Combining anthropology and archaeology this well researched and documented book reveals far more than the history of apparatus and how cooking has changed. I discovered this book while reading a novel in which one of the characters was reading the book. I am glad that I ordered it for myself. Despite its contents heavy on history and science it is eminently readable. I bought it for my daughter for Christmas thinking she would enjoy it. Decided to read it myself and am so glad that I did. Written by a British writer it has a European and British tilt but for me that makes it all the more interesting. I think you will be surprised at the breadth of knowledge imparted you would never have thought about and certainly never associated with cooking much less the apparatus used for cooking. Covering the history of various cooking tools, both those that work and those discarded anyone interested at all in the subject of food will find this a tasty read. If there were six stars I would give it to this book and can highly recommend it both to the culinary inclined, those interested in history as well as the general reader.
Angie Boyter –
This is a fascinating book for anyone who cooks… or eats. It delves into the history of things we use to cook and eat, like pots and knives and grinding utensils of various types and forks and spoons . It considers the ways we cook like frying and boiling and making frozen food. We don’t usually use terms like science and technology in connection with cooking and eating, but the author does fairly frequently, impressing me in way I had never considered with how these terms are and have been very applicable to this topic throughout history.
The lore was varied and delightful. Did you know that Einstein invented a refrigerator? Or what is the origin of the old phrase “A pint’s a pound”? Or that yummy yucca is toxic if eaten raw? Or why Europeans introduced such blunt table knives?
This is a book I will be recommending to a lot of friends. Although there is a Reading Group Guide included, I do not really see this as a reading group book. However, my own book group will be reading it this month, and I may have to eat my words!