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. Fueled by James Boswell's definition of humans as cooking animals (for 'no beast can cook'), Symons sets out to explore the civilizing role of cooks in history. His wanderings take us to the clay ovens of the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean and the bronze cauldrons of ancient China, to fabulous banquets in the temples and courts of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia, to medieval English cookshops and southeast Asian street markets, to palace kitchens, diners, and to modern fast-food eateries.Symons samples conceptions and perceptions of cooks and cooking, from Plato and Descartes to Marx and Virginia Woolf, asking why cooks, despite their vital and central role in sustaining life, have remained in the shadows, unheralded, unregarded, and underappreciated. 'People think of meals as occasions where you share food', he notes. 'They rarely think of cooks as sharers of food'. 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, Symons provides a spirited and diverting defense of a cook-centered view of the world. Michael Symons is the author of "One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia" and "The Shared Table".
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic in the Making,
By
This review is from: A History of Cooks and Cooking (The Food Series) (Hardcover)
Michael Symons has written a book that is both fascinating and seminal. Serious amateur cooks, professional cooks and cooking educators will find plenty of reinforcement for their roles in the craft that "distinguishes man from other animals." Symons addresses a wide variety of issues--the place of food in society and culture, the practical functions of cooking ("predigestion, detoxification; preservation), the thread through history of anti-consumption/anti-gastronomy philosphies; a conceptual framework for cooking technologies...if you have an interest, Symons probably addresses it). Carefully chosen excerpts from major food historians, chefs and writers add to the fascination of this very accessible work. At the end, I had a better understanding of why the "hearth" has been considered to be the "center" of the home and a more structured sense of why I love to cook for my family.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Brief History of Cooks and Cooking,
By
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This review is from: A History of Cooks and Cooking (The Food Series) (Paperback)
Random and Spurious. There is very little continuity and the choice of material the author chooses is more than a little confusing. The entry about knife's starts out with a server carving up her mother!? Also, the author overuses the annoying rhetorical device of Asyndeton; The sweet cakes, copuious libations, divinations of honey........
There were some compelling facts and tidbits, but not enough to make it worth purchasing and definately not worth the gradious title starting with "A History..."
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First Sentence:
Hovering over an industrial city spreading beside the Pacific, an angel tunes into the tangled whispers of human thought, watching over silliness and drama, and brushing comfort when and where it will. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
metabolic universe, culinary theory, flavour principles, culinary act, domestic cooks, goblin market, cooking animal, professional cooks Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Phillip Searle, United States, Grimod de La Reynière, Fertile Crescent, William Kitchiner, Audrey Richards, Baron von Rumohr, Isabella Beeton, Launcelot Sturgeon, Oasis Seros, Simone de Beauvoir, Middle East, Christina Rossetti, Cousin Helen, French Revolution, Georg Simmel, Norbert Elias, Antonin Carême, Catharine Beecher, Emile Durkheim, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mortimer Wheeler, North American, The Physiology of Taste, Yüan Mei New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Hovering over an industrial city spreading beside the Pacific, an angel tunes into the tangled whispers of human thought, watching over silliness and drama, and brushing comfort when and where it will. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
metabolic universe, culinary theory, flavour principles, culinary act, domestic cooks, goblin market, cooking animal, professional cooks Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Phillip Searle, United States, Grimod de La Reynière, Fertile Crescent, William Kitchiner, Audrey Richards, Baron von Rumohr, Isabella Beeton, Launcelot Sturgeon, Oasis Seros, Simone de Beauvoir, Middle East, Christina Rossetti, Cousin Helen, French Revolution, Georg Simmel, Norbert Elias, Antonin Carême, Catharine Beecher, Emile Durkheim, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mortimer Wheeler, North American, The Physiology of Taste, Yüan Mei New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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4
books
cite this book:
- Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (Oxford World's Classics) by Isabella Beeton on 10 pages
- The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy by M. F. K. Fisher on 6 pages
- Norbert Elias, Civilization and the Human Sciences by Stephen Mennell on page 53, page 151, and Back Matter
- RLE: China: Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (China: History, Philosophy, Economics) by The Arthur Waley Estate on page 47, page 48, and Back Matter
- Treatise on Domestic Economy by Catherine Beecher on page 22, page 149, and Back Matter
See all 100 books this book cites
- Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind's Relationship with Earth's Most Primal Element by Suzanne Staubach in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia (Food Culture around the World) by Glenn Randall Mack on page 183, and Back Matter
- Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef by Ian Kelly in Back Matter
- The Art of Decanting: Bringing Wine to Life by Sandra Jordan in Back Matter
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