Consider the Fork : : a History of how we Cook and eat

Locations
Call Number: 643.3 Wi, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Cooking / Essays & Narratives / Wilson, Bee
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	643.3 Wi	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	643.3 Wi	4-week checkout	Due 04-16-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Cooking / Essays & Narratives / Wilson, Bee	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Pots and pans: with rice cooker -- Knife: with mezzaluna -- Fire: with toaster -- Measure: with egg timer -- Grind: with nutmeg grater -- Eat: with tongs -- Ice: with molds -- Kitchen: with coffee.
This book offers a novel approach to food writing, presenting a history of eating habits and mores through the lens of the technologies we use to prepare, serve, and consume food. It tells the history of food through its tools across different eras and continents to present a fully rounded account of humans' evolving relationship to kitchen technology. From the birth of the fork in Italy as it discovered pasta, to culture wars over spoons in Restoration England, and tests for how to choose the perfect pan, this book examines the incredible creations that have shaped how and what we cook. Encompassing inventors, scientists, cooks and chefs, this is the previously unsung history of our kitchens.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

so-so submitted by amym on August 19, 2014, 12:09pm Parts of this book were fascinating, but other times I wanted more explanations that weren't forthcoming. For example, she talks about how pottery requires a high temperature to fire, but doesn't tell how ancient people created a fire that hot, or how people may have first discovered that heating clay would create pottery.

The History of the Technology of Our Kitchens submitted by sdunav on July 11, 2019, 5:23pm There were some unexpected delights in this nonfiction survey of kitchen technology. After a rather slow start (the evolution of pots and pans), I enjoyed reading about how different kinds of cutlery came about in England, France, China & Japan, and how the ice industry led to iceboxes and then refrigerators in the US. Similarly, the description of how cooking on an open hearth turned into various kinds of enclosed ovens and then convection ovens and microwaves was a fun read. The 1970's and the Cuisinart, the 1990's and ergonomic vegetable peelers, sous vide devices, all are examined in relation to cuisine and culture at large in a not-overly-academic manner.