Reviewed by Julia Sneden
CONSIDER the FORK
A HISTORY of HOW WE COOK AND EAT
by Bee Wilson, © 2012, Illustrations by Annabel Lee
Basic Books/member of Perseus Books Group, publisher; Hardcover: 281 pp
This book was given to me for Christmas. When I unwrapped it and saw the picture of utensils (a bunch of spoons and forks) on the dust cover, I managed to smile even though I was groaning inwardly: “Oh, not another recipe book!” I’m usually quite pleased to find a new cookbook, but I had just spent many days doing the planning, shopping, and prep-work for a big Christmas dinner, and the last thing I wanted to think about was food. I thanked the giver, placed the book at the bottom of the small pile of books by my chair, and moved along.
Well, lesson learned: Old truisms like “Don’t judge a book by its cover” are more often right than wrong, and to prove it, I offer you Consider the Fork. When I opened it a few days later, I found it to be a delightful and insightful read, written by an erudite author who manages somehow to be both scholarly and entertaining. The depth of her research is mind-boggling, but her style is simple, direct, and leavened with wry humor. She is touted as an award-winning food writer from Great Britain, but considering this book, it should be no surprise to find that she is also a scholar with a PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge. Calling her just “a food writer” would be a bit like calling Yo Yo Ma “a guy who plays the cello.”
Wilson’s erudition is second only to her ability to bring the esoteric down to the level, almost, of a cozy chat. This is a book that is really about kitchen technology, beginning a long way back with the earliest cooking tools and methods of prehistoric man, and working through the centuries to modern items as complex as the microwave or as simple as an ergonomic tool like the OXO peeler. No tool is too simple to escape her notice: her introduction to this book presents us with a little love note to that humblest of utensils, the wooden spoon. Let Ms. Wilson speak for herself:
“Traditional histories of technology do not pay much attention to food. They tend to focus on hefty industrial and military developments: wheels and ships, gun powder and telegraphs, airships and radio. When food is mentioned, it is usually in the context of agriculture – systems of tillage and irrigation – rather than the domestic work of the kitchen. But there is just as much invention in a nutcracker as in a bullet. Often, inventors have been working on something for military use, only to find that its best use is in the kitchen. Harry Brearley … invented stainless steel in 1913 as a way of improving gun barrels; inadvertently, he improved the world’s cutlery. Percy Spencer, creator of the microwave oven, was working on naval radar systems when he happened upon an entirely new method of cooking. Our kitchens owe much to the brilliance of science …”
Wilson goes on to make the further point that:
“It is wrong to suppose … that technology is just the appliance of scientific thought. It is something older and more basic than this … Technology is not a form of robotics but of something very human: the creation of tools and techniques that answer certain uses in our lives ... Scientific discovery does not depend on usage for its validity; technology does. When equipment falls out of use, it expires. However shrewdly designed it may be, an eggbeater does not fully achieve its purpose until someone picks it up and beats eggs.”
The organization of this book is in itself interesting. Chapters are headed with broad subjects, with a short, page-and-a-half disquisition on a small sub-subject at the end of each chapter. Thus, we have:
CHAPTER ONE
POTS AND PANS
With Rice Cooker
CHAPTER TWO
KNIFE
With Mezzaluna
CHAPTER THREE
MEASURE
With Egg Timer
Additional topics covered in separate chapters include “Fire;” “Grind,””Eat,” “Ice,” and “Kitchen.” I would be hard-pressed to choose my favorite amongst them, although I’ll admit that “Measure” afforded me the most new information, as well as coming close to my heart (but then, there was that wonderful wooden spoon in the introduction, and the bit in “Knife” about how the use of rounded table knives that came into use in the 18thcentury brought a major change in the alignment of our upper jaw, resulting in an overbite …). As I said, it’s impossible to choose among the embarrassment of riches.
This is a book you can take a bit at a time. Its organization favors dipping in for a chapter at your leisure, and putting the book aside to give yourself time to think about what you’ve learned. At the same time, it is so fascinating a book that you may, like me, simply immerse yourself and come up at midnight with your brain buzzy from overload – but I doubt you’ll feel the least unhappy about it.
©2013 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
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