cooking

 Cooking, the act of using heat to prepare food for consumption. Cooking is as old as civilization itself, and observers have perceived it as both an art and a science. Its history sheds light on the very origins of human settlement, and its variety and traditions reflect unique social, cultural, and environmental influences. The following article traces the evolution of cooking to the advent of national cuisines. See also cuisine; grande cuisine; nouvelle cuisine; molecular gastronomy; culture sections of assorted country articles.

The precise origins of cooking are unknown, but, at some point in the distant past, early humans conquered fire and started using it to prepare food. Researchers have found what appear to be the remains of campfires made 1.5 million years ago by Homo erectus, one of the early human species. In fact, anthropologists such as Richard Wrangham have argued that cooking played an essential role in human evolution. Cooking foods makes them more digestible, so the calories and some of the nutrients in them are easier to absorb. Thus, cooking allowed early humans to tap a wider variety of food sources and gain more nutrition from them.

Archaeological evidence of food preparation, backed up by knowledge of how modern-day hunter-gatherers prepare their food, suggests that the first cooks did little to their food in the way of preparation or technique. The flesh of animals was either roasted over a fire or boiled in water to make it tender, fruit was gathered and peeled, and nuts were shelled. Necessity, rather than flavour, usually dictated how hunter-gatherers of the past prepared their food. Some foods had to be prepared carefully to remove toxins. Native American tribes in California, for example, developed a procedure to make acorns edible by removing their bitter tannic acid. Farther south, native peoples in Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela learned to remove the cyanide from cassava (also called manioc), a starchy root used to make tapioca and a staple crop across the tropics.

Hunter-gatherers processed foods to preserve them. Because some hunter-gatherer societies faced uncertain food supplies, particularly in winter, they developed techniques such as smoking and drying to make foods last longer. They also created preparations such as pemmican (a mixture of meat, fat, and sometimes fruit) to preserve foods. Alcohol required elaborate preparation as well, and societies around the world perfected means to ferment fruit or grain into alcohol.