There is a bowl I like to use for
breakfast, whether I am having cereal or oatmeal or yogurt. There is a mug I
like to use for coffee in the late afternoon. And a spoon with which I like to
stir that coffee. There just is.
I have favorites – pans and pots, bowls, cups and utensils
I pick up often and prefer over others for certain foods. We all do.
In "Consider the Fork: A
History of How We Cook and Eat," well-researched and thoroughly engaging, British
food writer Bee Wilson looks at relationships between the tools we have and the
things we make. She explores the ways in which "the implements we use in the
kitchen affect what we eat, how we eat, and what we feel about what we eat."
She compares old-school diets
with modern-day sensibilities. She gives us a highly accessible yet comprehensive
assessment of the evolution of our cooking habits, tracing, for example, our integration
over the years of fire and ice.
Wilson ("Swindled: The Dark
History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee")
delineates in broad terms our great reliance on heat.
Once upon a time, a single fire
from an open hearth "served to warm a house, heat water for washing, and cook
dinner. For millennia, all cooking was roasting in one form or another. In the
developing world, the heat of an open fire remains the way that the very poorest
cook."
To work effectively with that fire,
we forged "a host of related tools," including spits, spit-jacks to rotate meat,
tongs, pot hooks, drip pans, trivets, and flesh-forks for pulling pieces of
meat out of a pot. These usually had long handles and were made of heavy metal.
If we tried using short-handled
stainless steel tongs or nonstick silicone spatulas - staples in our 21st-century
kitchens - in that environment, she suggests cheekily, we "wouldn't stand a
chance. The utensils would melt. I would fry. The children would howl. Dinner
would burn." Her wit is subtle but wonderful.
These days, we are able to
utilize different heat sources. We can control fire more easily. I can adjust the
flame on my stovetop with a knob, for instance, turning the temperature up to
boil a kettle of water or down to effect a slow braise. Inside ovens, "vast communal chambers" in ancient and medieval Europe used to bake bread
for entire villages, we make cookies and cakes for ourselves.
We also now have microwave ovens.
Invented by Raytheon engineers working originally on military radar systems, they
were first sold in the 1950s. They did not hit mainstream markets, however,
until about 1967 when manufacturers got the price of a unit below $500.
By the '80s and '90s, microwaves had
become indispensable. We use them to reheat leftovers or to avoid food prep
altogether, popping in store-bought frozen entrées when we eat alone or cannot
cook. What we gain in convenience we lose unfortunately in connectedness.
Like fire, ice matters, the
author says. "The efficient home refrigerator entirely changed the way food - getting it, cooking it, eating it - fitted into people's lives."
It changed what we ate. Rather
than rely on salted meats or preserves because we had to, we could enjoy fresh
meat, milk and green vegetables whenever we wanted to. It changed how we bought
food. "Without refrigeration, there could be no supermarkets, no 'weekly
shopping,' no stocking up the freezer for emergencies."
And it affected other industries,
giving rise to products such as Tupperware, first sold in 1946, and Saran Wrap,
introduced in 1953, as well as frozen foods and beverages. Orange juice
concentrate, for example, was the most successful commercially frozen product
in post-war America, selling 9 million gallons in 1948-1949. We increased our eating
and drinking options.
What sets Wilson's discussion apart
from those of her contemporaries, though, is her additional focus on simple hand-held
tools. Like Steve Gdula ("The Warmest Room
in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century
American Home"), she examines the overall design of our cooking spaces. But to her credit, she details seemingly ordinary items, too, making her book
all the more appealing.
She pays significant attention to
smaller things, what we generally would not even think twice about, what we have
on dish racks or countertops and pick up mindlessly every day.
Take, for example, the wooden
spoon. It is at heart a low-tech gadget. "It does not switch on and off or make
funny noises," Wilson writes. "It has no patent or guarantee. There is nothing
futuristic or shiny or clever about it." Yet it is amazingly versatile.
Study it. What is it made of?
Beech or a denser maple? How is it shaped? Is it oval or round? Cupped or flat?
Has it got a pointy part on one edge "to get at the lumpy bits in the corner of
the pan"? Is the handle short, for children first learning to cook perhaps,
or longer for adults to keep spatters at bay?
Wood, she tells us, is a nonabrasive
material, too, gentle enough on pots and pans. It is nonreactive and won't
leave a metallic taste in our food. "It is also a poor conductor of heat, which
is why you can stir hot soup with a wooden spoon without burning your hand."
Above all, it is familiar. We cook with wooden spoons because we always have.
That our workspaces contain
mishmashes of old and new tools should not surprise us, Wilson says. On the
contrary, eclectic collections reflect our changing personalities. Chopping
boards sit alongside food processors. Melon ballers can be popular one year,
handheld blenders all the rage another.
We don't necessarily want to
reinvent cooking; we only want to make it easier. We learn to adapt and improve
our skills over time. In most cases, "whisks, fire, and saucepans still do the
job pretty well. All we want is better whisks, better fire, and better
saucepans."
We might inherit some things from
parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, and receive some from friends.
Others could be gifts to ourselves. As it is with the utensils in my kitchen.
As it is, I suspect, in all our kitchens. So the food we make is not only a
combination of ingredients, she reminds us. "It is the product of technologies,
past and present." It is the result of a compendium.
(A version of this review appeared originally on www.culinate.com.)
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