Cooking or cookery is the art, technology and craft of preparing food for consumption with the use of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, from grilling food over an open fire to using electric stoves, to baking in various types of ovens, reflecting unique environmental, economic, and cultural traditions and trends. The ways or types of cooking also depend on the skill and type of training an individual cook has. Cooking is done both by people in their own dwellings and by professional cooks and chefs in restaurants and other food establishments. Cooking can also occur through chemical reactions without the presence of heat, most notably with ceviche, a traditional South American dish where fish is cooked with the acids in lemon or lime juice.
Preparing food with heat or fire is an activity unique to humans. Some anthropologists believe that cooking fires first developed around 250,000 years ago, although there is evidence for the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus beginning 400,000 years ago. Preparing food with heat or fire is an activity unique to humans. Some anthropologists believe that cooking fires first developed around 250,000 years ago, although there is evidence for the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus beginning 400,000 years ago.
“Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.”
-Marilyn Monroe
The expansion of agriculture, commerce, trade and transportation between civilizations in different regions offered cooks many new ingredients. New inventions and technologies, such as the invention of pottery for holding and boiling water, expanded cooking techniques.
Some modern cooks apply advanced scientific techniques to food preparation to further enhance the flavour of the dish served.No clear archeological evidence for the first cooking of food has survived. Archaeologists have discovered prehistoric examples of charred wood, but it is not certain whether this was caused by volcanic activity or human use of fire. Most anthropologists believe that widespread cooking fires began only about 250,000 years ago, when hearths started appearing. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that human ancestors may have invented cooking as far back as 1.8 million to 2.3 million years ago. Evidence for the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus beginning some 400,000 years ago has wide scholarly support. Archeological evidence, from 300,000 years in the form of ancient hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones, and flint, are found across Europe and the Middle East.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, food was a classic marker of identity in Europe. In the nineteenth-century “Age of Nationalism” cuisine became a defining symbol of national identity. Communication between the Old World and the New World influenced the history of food because of the movement of foods across the Atlantic, such as potatoes, tomatoes, corn, yams, and beans.
The Industrial Revolution brought mass-production, mass-marketing and standardization of food. Factories processed, preserved, canned, and packaged a wide variety of foods, and processed cereals quickly became a defining feature of the American breakfast. In the 1920s, freezing methods, cafeterias and fast-food establishments emerged.
Along with changes in food, starting early in the 20th century, governments have issued nutrition guidelines, leading to the food pyramid (introduced in Sweden in 1974). The 1916 “Food For Young Children” became the first USDA guide to give specific dietary guidelines. Updated in the 1920s, these guides gave shopping suggestions for different-sized families along with a Depression Era revision which included four cost levels. In 1943, the USDA created the “Basic Seven” chart to make sure that people got the recommended nutrients. It included the first-ever Recommended Daily Allowances from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1956, the “Essentials of an Adequate Diet” brought recommendations which cut the number of groups that American school children would learn about down to four. In 1979, a guide called “Food” addressed the link between too much of certain foods and chronic diseases, but added “fats, oils, and sweets” to the four basic food groups.
