Consider the Fork
A History of How We Cook and Eat
by Bee Wilson
The recap
Bee Wilson begins from a simple, overlooked idea: the tools in a kitchen drawer are technology, and they have quietly shaped what people eat, how food tastes and even how human bodies look. Ranging from the humble wooden spoon to the sous-vide machine, she follows pots, knives, fire, measuring, refrigeration and other everyday inventions through thousands of years of cooking. Her canvas is global, so a thought about cutting food can lead to chopsticks in China, and a question about dinner-table manners can end at the dentist. Along the way she weighs surprising arguments, such as one anthropologist's theory that the knife and fork changed the shape of the European bite. Wilson writes with curiosity, wit and an obvious love of good food, wearing her research lightly and never losing sight of the people standing at the stove. The book makes the familiar look strange, and readers may find themselves regarding their whisks, ladles and graters with fresh respect, aware that each one carries a long human story.
Why read it
For curious cooks and history lovers who enjoy discovering the hidden stories behind ordinary objects.
Fun facts
- 01
Wilson discusses anthropologist C. Loring Brace's argument that the modern overbite appeared in Europe around 250 years ago, once people began cutting food with a knife and fork instead of tearing it with their teeth.
- 02
The same theory links a similar change in China, about 900 years earlier, to the arrival of chopsticks.
- 03
The book's tour of kitchen technology runs from the wooden spoon to the sous-vide machine.
- 04
Wilson has been named Food Journalist of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers three times for her weekly column.
