A History of Cooks and Cooking

About the Book

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. In this wide-ranging history of humans as cooking animals, Symons takes readers to the clay ovens of the prehistoric Mediterranean and the bronze cauldrons of ancient China, to fabulous banquets in the temples and courts of Mesopotamia and Persia, to medieval English cookshops and southeast Asian street markets, to palace kitchens, diners, and modern fast-food eateries. Symons also samples perceptions of cooks and cooking from Plato to Virginia Woolf, asking why cooks, despite their vital and central role in sustaining life, have remained in the shadows.

Considering such notions as the physical and political consequences of sauce, connections between food and love, and cooking as a regulator of clock and calendar, A History of Cooks and Cooking provides a spirited defense of a cook-centered view of the world.