Consider the Fork
How Technology Transforms the Way We Cook and Eat
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Average rating3.5
Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson's secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies - from the fork to the microwave and beyond - have fundamentally shaped how and what we eat. Since prehistory, humans have braved sharp knives, fire, and grindstones to transform raw ingredients into something delicious -- or at least edible. But these tools have also transformed how we consume, and how we think about, our food. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer Bee Wilson takes readers on a wonderful and witty tour of the evolution of cooking around the world, revealing the hidden history of objects we often take for granted. Technology in the kitchen does not just mean the Pacojets and sous-vide machines of the modern kitchen, but also the humbler tools of everyday cooking and eating: a wooden spoon and a skillet, chopsticks and forks. Blending history, science, and personal anecdotes, Wilson reveals how our culinary tools and tricks came to be and how their influence has shaped food culture today. The story of how we have tamed fire and ice and wielded whisks, spoons, and graters, all for the sake of putting food in our mouths, Consider the Fork is truly a book to savor.
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4 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
A brief history of kitchen tools and concepts, chiefly from a Western perspective.
Review
This is a remarkably enjoyable book, with thoughtful if incomplete discussion of the history of key kitchen tools and concepts. It's written in a light, friendly tone, with a practical outlook on things like refrigerator technology and the number of tines on a fork. The title caught my attention, and I expected good things, but I was pleasantly surprised by just how engaging Wilson's prose is. Though the chapters are largely discrete, and she hops backward and forward among time frames and topics within them, it's never hard to follow the thread, and always interesting.
Wilson's history is very Western-focused – the UK and US especially – but she does make an effort here and there to include other cultures, and China in particular (e.g., in the chapter on knives). I wish she'd extended that range all through the book (e.g., the chapter on preservation), and what there is feels a little forced, but I was still glad to read it.
Wilson's on firm ground until the last chapter, “Kitchen”, where she implicitly recognizes a trap, but still falls into it. In short, for a book celebrating (usually) the development of tools to make cooking easier and better, she draws a line at the present, essentially saying “What we have now is good enough. No need for anything new. Refinement of existing tools is all we need.” Where previous chapters touting game-changing innovations like fire and refrigerators, now, apparently revolution is unnecessary. It's – as she herself accepts in passing – classic conservatism, much like that of the past cultures she smiles at who thought pots were an unnecessary affectation, preferring to cook in a hole in the ground.
Still, while the final chapter is a bit off-key, the book as a whole is light, fun, and well worth reading.
