Tools for Food: The Stories Behind the Objects that Influence How and What We Eat

by Corinne Mynatt

Tools For Food explores the history of 250 of our most-loved and intriguing kitchen items and how they've changed the way we live.

From 12th century Mongolian fire pots, to 17th century Chinese scissors, from beloved Tupperware food containers to the iconic Alessi lemon squeezer, this culinary journey covers well-loved designs, as well as lesser known objects.

The reader will be taken on a journey around the globe, exploring how and what we cook has changed over the centuries, showing similarities and diversity across times and cultures.

From primitive necessities to specialized high-tech equipment, each image is accompanied by a text detailing its origin, as well as interesting facts about its relationship between culture and cooking.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Cooking

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 23, 2021

Reviews

[Petra X]

Update Kebabs were first eaten 300,000 years ago! It makes sense to thread gobs of meat on to a skewer and roast them over a fire. Much better than relying on someone to carve the meat (and bits you prefer) into equal slices.

Pretty old, but not that old, is the Chinese bamboo steamer, dated to 3000 BCE. The wok though, only goes back to 1 BCE. So dumplings before stir fry.

I thought pressure cookers were a modern invention, but no, the first ones were invented in 1680 and had a pressure of 35-50lb, capable of softening bones.

When cooking couscous and stews (back when I did cook) I used to follow recipes for tagines, Moroccan stews, but never used the cone-shaped tagine itself. I didn't think it was worth buying. But now I see I missed out. The sides and top of the tagine remain cooler than the base, so that the condensation of all those nice juices will fall back down and baste the dish, helping it to become tender rather than drying out.

The book is one I dip into every now and again. It's really interesting and well-illustrated. It would be a great present for a serious cook who likes either history or implements.
__________

I misread the title when I ordered the book, I thought it was Food for Tools, and was expecting some humorous book about idiot guys which might amuse a customer or two. But no, it's a serious compendium of tools through the ages used for food preparation and storage, and although it is very dryly written, is actually interesting.

I had to look up dough box which the author was a big box divided into two, one side for flour and the other for dough to rise and the top for kneading or ironing! None of them were small, but some were table-sized http://tiny.cc/doughbox19C. So a useful piece of furniture

Sieves, storage containers, devices for weighing things have obviously been around since antiquity. But apple corers I wouldn't have thought such a necessity. They have been found, ancient ones, made from the metatarsal bones of sheep and work perfectly well.

The history of the tools is not particularly in depth but is not restricted to Europe either, which so many history books are.

Enjoyable book to dip into every now and again.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a pictorial work describing a collection of 250 kitchen utensils - from aprons to scrubbers to pots to peelers to knives and moulds. Each entry consists of a photograph and several paragraphs of text. Yet this book is much more substantial than this sounds; through this collection of objects, you can glimpse the broader history of civilisation, from nomadism to agrarian society, through industrialisation to the present day. You can see how food and cooking slowly evolved from a purely functional (ie sustenance) to a cultural and even artistic activity.

I learnt many interesting things from this book; my favourite tidbits include: many tools evolved from / mimicked natural materials (for example, rough rocks were used as the first grinding surfaces, which then evolved to specially designed metal and ceramic surfaces; kitchen utensils that were novel uses of workshop tools (eg vices used as nutcrackers); and that the Industrial Revolution spurred on a huge wave of creativity and specialisation, as the possibilities of mechanical manufacturing led people to invent a range of ever more specialised utensils to solve specific problems (prawn deveiners anyone?). This book also encourages us to reflect on the changing relationship between function, art and design; whereas historical utensils may be beautiful because they have decoration, nowadays the utensil may be seen as simply a form or format for artistic challenge - that (in)famous Alessi citrus squeezer is, apparently, not designed to be functional, but simply an exercise in taking that form to its (aesthetically pleasing) extreme.

[Harlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tools for Food does interesting, mostly-well-researched, surface-level summaries of the history of hundreds of tools used in and with the kitchen. Each page has a large photos of one or two examples of a class of object (e.g., a lemon juicer), with a paragraph describing some of the historical and design aspects of that object. It covers a pretty broad set of items from all over the world, although it's not comprehensive. The book is fun to read or flip through on a coffee-table, although some of the writing is a bit obtuse, which can be distracting.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Museum in a book? Yeah, sign me up. Cool to see the actual names and history of tools we use to cook.