Consider the Fork: A History of Invention in the Kitchen - Hardcover

Bee Wilson is a food writer, historian, and author of three books, including Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee and The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us.

*Starred Review* At every turn, Wilson’s history of the technology of cooking and eating upends another unexamined tradition, revealing that utensils and practices now taken for granted in kitchen and at table have long and remarkable histories. The knife evolved from primitive humans’ need to reduce food to manageable portions. Thermometers helped make home ovens practical. Some of the first pleas for animal rights arose from the use of caged dogs to turn spits in front of kitchen hearths. Most societies weigh recipe ingredients, but Americans continue to measure ingredients by volume. Wilson traces this deviation back to the difficulty of lugging scales westward across the frontier. Wilson’s book teems with other delightful insights, laying to rest such questions as what Chinese parents say to their children to persuade them to finish their food, since they can’t employ the typical American admonition about children starving in China. (Answer: Don’t disrespect the sweat of the hardworking rice farmer.) --Mark Knoblauch