A History of Cooks and Cooking

The Food Series

by Michael Symons

Never has there been so little need to cook. Yet Michael Symons maintains that to be truly human we need to become better cooks: practical and generous sharers of food.

Fueled by James Boswell's definition of humans as cooking animals (for "no beast can cook"), Symons sets out to explore the civilizing role of cooks in history. His wanderings take us to the clay ovens of the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean and the bronze cauldrons of ancient China, to fabulous banquets in the temples and courts of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia, to medieval English cookshops and Southeast Asian street markets, to palace kitchens, diners, and modern fast food eateries.

This inviting volume--originally published in Australia under the title A History of Cooking--samples conceptions and perceptions of cooks and cooking from Plato and Descartes to Marx and Virginia Woolf. Symons asks why cooks, despite their vital and central role in sustaining life, have remained in the shadows, unheralded, unregarded, and underappreciated. "People think of meals as occasions where you share food," he notes; "they rarely think of cooks as sharers of food."

Considering such notions as the physical and political consequences of sauce, connections between food and love, and cooking as a regu-lator of clock and calendar, Symons provides a spirited and diverting defense of a cook-centered view of the world.

About the Author:

Michael Symons is the author of One Contin-uous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia and The Shared Table.

Genres: Food, Cooking, History, Nonfiction, Food History

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[JW · Rating 2 out of 5]

I disagree with one basic premise of this book; that cooks are unheralded. But in 1998 when this book was published the super-star chef age was firmly rooted around the globe. In fact this book, by the australian Michael Symons not the american Michael Symons, is itself a testament to the very importance of cooks throughout history. I am really enjoying it.

[Jon Laiche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous ! This is culinary history at its best. The theme is, “What exactly do cooks do?” It is carried out by examining the survival techniques of “at least half of everyone who has lived in the past one million years or before”. As such it examines the activities of gathering, processing/preparing/ and sharing the very subsistence of humanity. Highly Recommended to anyone with any interest in eating, food acquisition, and the art of dining. If you eat you should read this book.