Publisher Description
Since prehistory, humans have braved the business ends of knives, scrapers, and mashers, all in the name of creating something delicious—or at least edible. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer and historian Bee Wilson traces the ancient lineage of our modern culinary tools, revealing the startling history of objects we often take for granted. Charting the evolution of technologies from the knife and fork to the gas range and the sous-vide cooker, Wilson offers unprecedented insights into how we’ve prepared and consumed food over the centuries—and how those basic acts have changed our societies, our diets, and our very selves.
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“Bee Wilson’s book, Consider the Fork, looks at the technology behind kitchen tools – what we use to cook/eat with rather than what we eat. She lays out her basic thesis in the introduction: we “have been changed by kitchen technology – the how as well as the what” (p xvii); “the implements we use affect what we eat, how we eat.” (p xii). The rest of the book is details but what great details. The tools range from the basic (knife, spoon, containment of fire) to the modern (sous-vide machines.) The tools may speak of a time (marrow spoons) or of the culture that use them (chopsticks.) Bee Wilson also looks at many that were abandoned before finding an audience (the water-powered egg whisk.) She finishes with a chapter on the evolution of the kitchen itself. I leave with a greater appreciation of all the kitchen tools that have made my life easier whether they be a measuring cup, a mixer or a microplane grater.”
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Tinika (4 out of 5 stars)
