A History Of Cooks And Cooking

Named Best Culinary History Book at the Salon International du Livre GourmandFifth World Cookbook Fair Perigueux France Winner Bronze Ladle in the BestFood Book... » 

Named Best Culinary History Book at the Salon International du Livre GourmandFifth World Cookbook Fair Perigueux France Winner Bronze Ladle in the BestFood Book division World Food Media Awards Never has there been so little needto cook. Yet Michael Symons maintains that to be truly human we need to becomebetter cooks practical and generous sharers of food. Fueled by James Boswellsdefinition of humans as cooking animals for no beast can cook Symons setsout to explore the civilizing role of cooks in history. His wanderings take usto the clay ovens of the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean and the bronzecauldrons of ancient China to fabulous banquets in the temples and courts ofMesopotamia Egypt and Persia to medieval English cookshops and southeastAsian street markets to palace kitchens diners and to moderns fastfoodeateries. Symons samples conceptions and perceptions of cooks and cooking fromPlato and Descartes to Marx and Virginia Woolf asking why cooks despite theirvital and central role in sustaining life have remained in the shadowsunheralded unregarded and underappreciated. People think of meals asoccasions where you share food he notes. They rarely think of cooks assharers of food. Considering such notions as the physical and politicalconsequences of sauce connections between food and love and cooking as aregulator of clock and calendar Symons provides a spirited and divertingdefense of a cookcentered view of the world. «