Consider the Fork

by Bee Wilson

  In the kitchen, old and new stand side by side as companions. In the grand kitchens of the past, when a new piece of equipment was adopted, it did not necessarily edge out the old. Successive tools were added on top, but the original ways of cooking could be glimpsed underneath, like a palimpsest.

  Calke Abbey is an old Derbyshire house whose inhabitants, the Harpur family, hardly threw anything away. It now belongs to the National Trust and remains in a state of considerable decrepitude. The large old kitchen is really a series of kitchens, one on top of the other, each representing a slice of time. This stone-flagged room was first fitted as a kitchen in 1794 (before that, it may have been a chapel). The kitchen clock was bought in Derby that year. Also original to 1794 is a vast old roasting hearth, with a clockwork spit-jack on top. In front of this fire, beef would once have turned on its spits. But sometime in the 1840s, roasting must have been abandoned, as a closed-off cast-iron oven was shoved into this hearth. Later, this oven, too, must have failed to meet the household’s needs, for in 1889, a second hearth was added with an additional cast-iron stove. Meanwhile, along another wall there is an eighteenth-century-style stewing stove set in brickwork, used for stewing and sauces. Finally, in the 1920s the inhabitants installed a modern Beeston boiler for hot water alongside the old ranges. At no stage did anyone think to remove any of the previous cooking tools. In 1928, with the number of servants in the house suddenly reduced, the room was abruptly abandoned; a new, more functional kitchen was set up elsewhere in the house. The old kitchen remains now as it was in 1928. A dresser still stands, filled with rusting pots and pans. The spit-jack and the kitchen clock still hang on the walls, just where they were first placed.

  Of course, most households are more ruthless about discarding things when they fall out of use. But kitchens remain extremely good at accommodating both old and new under a single roof. There is something sad as well as wasteful about the current impulse to start a kitchen from scratch: to rip out every trace of the cooks who came before you. It feels forgetful. Kitchens in general have never been so highly designed; so well equipped; so stylish; or so soulless. In the 1910s, the ideal was the “rational” kitchen; later, in the 1940s and 1950s, it was the “beautiful” kitchen. Now, it is the “perfect” kitchen. Everything must match and fit, from ivory ceiling to limestone floor. Every element must be “contemporary.” Anything shabby or out of place is discarded (unless you’ve gone for “shabby chic” as your vibe).

  It’s an illusion, of course. In the most highly designed modern kitchen, we are still drawing on the tools and techniques of the past. As you grasp your shiny tongs to whip up a modern dish of wok-fired squid and greens or linguini with butternut squash and red chili, you are still doing an old, old thing: using the transformative power of fire to make something taste better. Our kitchens are filled with ghosts. You may not see them, but you could not cook as you do without their ingenuity: the potters who first enabled us to boil and stew; the knife forgers; the resourceful engineers who designed the first refrigerators; the pioneers of gas and electric ovens; the scale makers; the inventors of eggbeaters and peelers.

  The food we cook is not only an assemblage of ingredients. It is the product of technologies, past and present. One sunny day, I decide to make a quick omelette for my lunch, a puffy golden oval in the French rolled tradition. On paper, it consists of nothing but eggs (free range); sweet, cold butter; and sea salt, but the true components are many more. There is the fridge from which I fetch the butter and the old battered aluminium frying pan in which I cook it, whose surface is seasoned from ten years of use. There is the balloon whisk that beats the eggs, though a fork would do just as well. The countless cookery writers whose words warned me not to overbeat. The gas burner that enables me to get the pan hot enough but not so hot the eggs burn or get rubbery. The spatula that rolls the golden-brown omelette onto the plate. Thanks to all these technologies, the omelette has on this occasion, for this particular solitary lunch, worked. I am pleased. The entire mood of an afternoon can be spoiled or improved by lunch.

  There is still one more component to this meal, however: the impulse to make it in the first place. Kitchens only come alive when you cook in them. What really drives technology is the desire to use it. This omelette lunch would never have been made without my mother, who first taught me that the kitchen was a place where good things happen.

  Coffee

  COFFEE TECHNOLOGY HAS BECOME PERPLEXING. The inventiveness lavished on this substance reflects its status as the world’s culinary drug of choice. To brew coffee is to do nothing more than mix grounds with hot water and strain out the dregs. But methods for doing this have varied wildly, from the Turkish ibriks used to make rich dark coffee since the sixteenth century to the my-pressi TWIST launched in 2008, a handheld espresso machine powered with gas canisters like a cream whipper.

  Only a couple of years ago, the last word in coffee makers was the huge espresso machine, the main questions being how much you could afford to pay (the best cost thousands) and how much control you wanted. Another option was a capsule-based machine such as Nespresso, offering total consistency. But true coffee obsessives want to be able to engage with the physics of the process: the beans, the grind, the tamp, the pressure.

  Then espresso addicts started to notice that you could spend a fortune and do everything right and still end up with mediocre coffee—there were just too many variables. The new wave of coffee technology has moved beyond espresso machines—indeed, largely beyond electricity. There’s the AeroPress, a clever plastic tool that uses air pressure to force coffee down a tube into a mug. All you need is a kettle and strong arms. Still trendier is the Japanese siphon. It looks like something from a chemistry class: two interconnected glass bulbs with a small burner underneath. But people of a certain age point out that these siphons are not so different from the Cona coffee maker of the 1960s.

  The real action in coffee now is low-tech. We’ve spent so long thinking about ways to make better coffee, we’ve come full circle. The most avant-garde coffee experts in the world—in London, Melbourne, and Auckland—now favor French press and filter over pricey espresso machines. It’s only a matter of time before someone announces the next big thing: the pitcher and spoon.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The epigraph to Chapter 7, “This Is Just to Say,” by William Carlos Williams, is taken from The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909–1939, copyright © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  The person I really want to thank is the great Pat Kavanagh, who died in 2008. I will always be grateful that she was my agent. It was Pat who led me to Helen Conford at Penguin, whose idea this book was, and who has been the most conscientious and insightful editor I could wish for; Helen disproves the adage that no one really edits books any more. Also at Penguin, among others, I’d like to thank Patrick Loughran, Penelope Vogler, Lisa Simmonds, and Jane Robertson.

  Pat also brought me to my two superb agents, Sarah Ballard at United Agents in London and Zoe Pagnamenta at the Zoe Pagnamenta Literary Agency in New York; I am so thankful to them both; also to Lara Hughes-Young at United Agents.

  I owe huge thanks, too, to Lara Heimert at Basic Books, for her patience, encouragement, and intelligent editorial judgment. Also at Basic, thanks to Katy O’Donnell, Michele Jacob, Caitlin Graf, Michelle Welsh-Horst, Cisca Schreefel, and Michele Wynn, to whom I am particularly grateful for her careful copyediting.

  Annabel Lee produced wonderful illustrations at very short notice; I wish that my own kitchen implements looked half as good. Carolin Young kindly read the book with a food historian’s eye, but needless to say, any mistakes that remain are my own. At an early stage of writing, I took part in an edition of the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme on gadgets, which was a great help in refining some of my ideas; thanks so much to Sheila Dillon and Dilly Barlow. I am also grateful to the editor of my food column in Stella magazine, Elfreda Pownall. All my love and
thanks to my family—David, Tom, Tasha, and Leo—for putting up with the curious new gadgets coming into the house and the dull visits to stately home kitchens; and special thanks to Tom for the title ideas (even if we didn’t use yours in the end).

  Much of the research was done at the Cambridge University Library; and at the Australian National University in Canberra (thanks to Bob Goodin). Finally, for help, advice, or assistance of various kinds I would like to thank, among others: Amy Bryant, Catherine Blyth, David Burnett, Sally Butcher, John Cadieux, Melissa Calaresu, Tracy Calow, Ivan Day, Katie Drummond, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Gonzalo Gil, Sophie Hannah, Claire Hughes, Tristram Hunt, Tom Jaine, Beeban Kidron, Miranda Landgraf, Frederika Latif at John Lewis, Reg Lee, Anne Malcolm, Esther McNeill, Anthea Morrison, Anna Murphy, John Osepchuk, Kate Peters, Ben Phillips at Steamer Trading, Sarah Ray, Miri Rubin, Cathy Runciman, Lisa Runciman, Ruth Runciman, Carry Runciman, Helen Saberi, Abby Scott, Benah Shah at OXO, Gareth Stedman Jones, Alex Tennant at Aerobie, Robert and Isabelle Tombs, Mark Turner, Robin Weir, Andrew Wilson, and Emily Wilson.

  NOTES

  GENERAL NOTES ON SOURCES

  In a book covering so much ground, I inevitably owe a great deal to many secondary sources, from journal articles to chapters and books, in addition to the primary sources I consulted, from historic cookbooks to works on technology, to contemporary newspapers and other periodicals, to catalogs of kitchenware such as Sears, Roebuck for the United States and Jacquo-tot for France; and to the kitchens I visited. The bibliography gives a fuller list of sources consulted, but the notes here will single out those that were especially helpful.

  When I was first starting to think about this subject, a friend gave me Molly Harrison’s The Kitchen in History (Osprey 1972) and it remained a useful reference point throughout. I am also indebted to Irons in the Fire: A History of Cooking Equipment (Crowood Press 1984) by Rachel Feild, who approaches the subject of kitchen tools from an antiquarian perspective.

  Anyone who is remotely interested in the history of food should read Reay Tannahill’s wonderful essay Food in History (updated edition, 2002). On cooks in history, A History of Cooks and Cooking (Prospect Books 2001) by Michael Symons is both provocative and packed with information. Another panoramic overview is Food: A History by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (Macmillan 2001).

  I am grateful to the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, an annual gathering cofounded by Alan Davidson and Theodore Zeldin, which remains one of the best occasions for the study and appreciation of food in history. There are countless fascinating nuggets in the Symposium Proceedings, published each year by Prospect Books, which also publishes Petits Propos Culinaires, an invaluable journal for food historians (and despite the title, not in French). Another great periodical on food history is Gastronomica, edited by Darra Goldstein. I also owe a debt to Ivan Day and Peter Brears, two remarkable food historians whose work, often through the Leeds History of Food Symposium, has been unusual for its emphasis on the techniques and equipment of historic cookery.

  Among the general books I have found most useful on cooking technology, seen in context as one aspect of domestic life in Britain, I strongly recommend Caroline Davidson’s superb A Woman’s Work Is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles, 1650-1950 (Chatto & Windus 1982) and Christina Hardyment’s From Mangle to Microwave: The Mechanisation of Household Work (Polity 1990); the latter covers the modern period up to 1990. For the American side of the same story, told from a feminist point of view, More Work for Mother (Basic Books 1983) by Ruth Schwartz Cowan is thought-provoking. All three of these are brilliant works of social history, as much as histories of gadgetry.

  There are countless fine guides to modern kitchen tools. The one I returned to most was James Beard’s encyclopedic work The Cooks’ Catalogue (New York 1975): not for nothing is he still remembered as one of the great American food writers. His combination of knowledge and passion makes him always worth reading. Also useful is Burt Wolf’s updated version of the same work: The New Cooks‘Catalogue (Alfred Knopf 2000), a fine guide to everything from pastry knives to food processors. For something more up-to-date, I like Alton Brown’s Gear for Your Kitchen (Stewart Tabori Chang 2008); or for the futuristic kitchen, Jeff Potter’s exciting Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food (O’Reilly Media 2010), which will tell you everything from how to improvise your own sous-vide machine to a method for cooking salmon in the dishwasher.

  INTRODUCTION

  On the dying tradition of wooden eating spoons, see Rogers (1997).

  For examples of traditional histories of technology that pay little or no attention to food, see Larson (1961), which covers neither food nor cooking; Derry and Williams (1960), which covers the plough and the threshing machine but not kitchen tools; Forbes (1950), which includes canning but not domestic food technology.

  Linda C. Brewster’s debittering patents are among the many inventions by women listed in Stanley (1993).

  On the link between pottery and the survival of the toothless, see Brace (2000) and Brace et al. (1987).

  The idea of the hidden intelligence of tools is explored in the brilliant Weber (1992).

  On frigophobia at Les Halles, see Claflin (2008).

  The 2011 survey of British cooking habits was commissioned by 5by25, a campaign aimed at getting people to learn five dishes by the age of twenty-five.

  The Japanese research on feeding rats differently textured pellets is written up in Oka et al. (2003).

  The revolution of brick chimney cooking is explored in Feild (1984), which also mentions the irony of cans being invented so long before can-openers.

  Kranzberg’s laws of technology are laid out in Kranzberg (1986).

  Cowan’s arguments about communal cooking are in Cowan (1983).

  CHAPTER ONE: POTS AND PANS

  By far the most useful source for writing this chapter was Jaine (1989), the Proceedings of the 1988 Oxford Symposium on the Cooking Pot. This volume includes Lemme (1989) on the ideal pot, Gordon and Jacobs-McCusker on one-pot cookery, and Coe on the Maya cooking pot, among many other excellent essays. The anthropological and archaeological literature on early pottery is immense. On the origins of pottery, see, for example, the Hoopes and Barnett volume (1995), Arnold (1985), Childe (1936), Pierce (2005). On Jomon pottery, see Aikens (1995). On turtle cookery, see Man (1932) and Bates (1873). On pit ovens, see Wandsnider (1997), Doerper and Collins (1989), Thoms (2009), and many more. On Greek pottery, see Vitelli (1989) and (1999), Sparkes (1962), Soyer (1853). On cauldrons, see Feild (1984), Wheaton (1983), Brannon (1984). On the batterie de cuisine, see Brears and Sambrook (1996).

  The nineteenth-century authors I consulted on the question of boiling included Beeton (2000), Blot (1868), Buchanan (1815), Kitchiner (1829).

  For a great account of the shortcomings of cooking with nonstick, and much else besides, see Harris (1980).

  On the relationship between cooking pots and burners, see Myhrvold (2011).

  CHAPTER TWO: KNIFE

  On Stone Age technologies of cutting, see Toth and Schick (2009), Davidson and McGrew (2005), and Wrangham (1999).

  On the history of the tou and its contribution to Chinese cuisine, see Chang (1977), particularly the essays by Anderson and Anderson and by Chang himself; also Symons (2001); and Book 10 of the Analects of Confucius.

  For a practical guide to Chinese methods of cutting and the tou (as well as sumptuous recipes for what to do with your tou-chopped ingredients), see Dunlop (2001); also Dunlop (2004), an article on the tou. Dunlop is the Elizabeth David of Chinese food, one of the great food writers today.

  On European carving, see Furnivall (1868), Worde (2003), Brears (1999) and Brears (2008); also Visser (1991). On the Sheffield cutlery industry, see Lloyd (1913). On European knives as part of European civilization, see Marquardt (1997) and all the essays in Coffin et al. (2006).

  The complete court proceedings of the case of Joseph Baretti and his prosecution for murder by fru
it knife can be read at www.oldbaileyonline.org/; I recommend it; the trial makes scintillating reading.

  Charles Loring Brace is a prolific scholar; among the many papers in which he has set out his thesis about the overbite and other aspects of human teeth are Brace (1977), Brace (1984), Brace (1986), Brace et al. (1987), Brace (2000). Ferrie (1997) is an interview with Brace in which he discusses how his interest in teeth developed. Also on Brace and his career, see Falk and Seguchi (2006) by two of his former pupils.

  For practical appreciations of the joy of knives, which to buy and how to use them, see Jay (2008), Hertzmann (2007), McEvedy (2011). My own favorite knife is carbon steel with a rosewood handle and comes from Wildfire Cutlery in Oregon; I am grateful to McEvedy for the recommendation.

  CHAPTER THREE: FIRE

  For a sense of Ivan Day and his work, see www.historiccookery.com; also Day (2000), Day (2009), and Day (2011). Where Day is quoted here, it is mostly based on conversations with the author.

  On cooking as the moment that made us human, see Wrangham (2009) and Wrangham, Jones et al. (1999). On the technology of open hearth cookery, Day (2009), Brears (2009). Eveleigh (1991) is one of the best sources on the English tradition of roasting before an open fire; see also Eveleigh (1986) on roasting utensils. Rogers (2003) is good on the English affection for roast beef. On the risks of fire in premodern times, see Feild (1984) and Hanawalt (1986). For Rumford’s theory of open hearths versus closed stoves, see Rumford (1968), vol. 3. On early bread ovens as studied by archaeologists, see Waines (1987) and Samuel (1999). For an extraordinary report on the impact of smokeless stoves in the developing world, see Bilger (2009).