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History: Cooking or Cookery Is The

Cooking is the art of preparing food for consumption using various techniques and ingredients. Cooking methods vary widely across cultures and depend on available resources and technology. While cooking likely began around 2 million years ago with the use of fire, it has evolved significantly with innovations like pottery and modern appliances. Advances in agriculture, trade, and transportation have introduced cooks to new ingredients over time. Today, some professional chefs apply scientific techniques to further enhance flavors.

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96 views

History: Cooking or Cookery Is The

Cooking is the art of preparing food for consumption using various techniques and ingredients. Cooking methods vary widely across cultures and depend on available resources and technology. While cooking likely began around 2 million years ago with the use of fire, it has evolved significantly with innovations like pottery and modern appliances. Advances in agriculture, trade, and transportation have introduced cooks to new ingredients over time. Today, some professional chefs apply scientific techniques to further enhance flavors.

Uploaded by

Nadita
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cooking or cookery is the art, technology, science and craft of preparing food for consumption.

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. Types of cooking also depend on the skill levels and
training of cooks. 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, such as in ceviche, a traditional South American dish where
fish is cooked with the acids in lemon or lime juice or orange juice.
Preparing food with heat or fire is an activity unique to humans. It may have started around 2 million
years ago, though archaeological evidence for it reaches no more than 1 million years ago. [1]
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 flavor of the
dish served.[2]

Contents

 1 History
 2 Ingredients
o 2.1 Carbohydrates
o 2.2 Fats
o 2.3 Proteins
o 2.4 Water
o 2.5 Vitamins and minerals
 3 Methods
 4 Health and safety
o 4.1 Food safety
o 4.2 Effects on nutritional content of food
o 4.3 Carcinogens
o 4.4 Other health issues
 5 Scientific aspects
 6 Home-cooking and commercial cooking
 7 See also
 8 References
 9 External links

History[edit]
Homo erectus may have begun cooking food as early as 500,000 years ago.

Phylogenetic analysis suggests that human ancestors may have invented cooking as far back as 1.8
million to 2.3 million years ago.[3] Re-analysis of burnt bone fragments and plant ashes from the
Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa has provided evidence supporting control of fire by early humans
by 1 million years ago.[4] There is evidence that Homo erectus was cooking their food as early as
500,000 years ago.[5] Evidence for the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus beginning some
400,000 years ago has wide scholarly support.[6][7] Archaeological evidence from 300,000 years ago, [8]
in the form of ancient hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones, and flint, are found across Europe
and the Middle East. Anthropologists think that widespread cooking fires began about 250,000 years
ago when hearths first appeared.[9]
Recently, the earliest hearths have been reported to be at least 790,000 years old. [10]

Historical oven baking, in a painting by Jean-François Millet, 1854

Communication between the Old World and the New World in the Columbian Exchange influenced
the history of cooking. The movement of foods across the Atlantic from the New World, such as
potatoes, tomatoes, maize, beans, bell pepper, chili pepper, vanilla, pumpkin, cassava, avocado,
peanut, pecan, cashew, pineapple, blueberry, sunflower, chocolate, gourds, and squash, had a
profound effect on Old World cooking. The movement of foods across the Atlantic from the Old
World, such as cattle, sheep, pigs, wheat, oats, barley, rice, apples, pears, peas, chickpeas, green
beans, mustard, and carrots, similarly changed New World cooking.[11]
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.
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. [12] In the 1920s, freezing
methods, cafeterias, and fast food restaurants emerged.
Starting early in the 20th century, governments issued nutrition guidelines that led to the food
pyramid[13] (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 promote nutrition. 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 excessive amounts of unhealthy foods and chronic diseases. Fats, oils, and sweets
were added to the four basic food groups.

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