Mrs Beeton on Cooking’s place:
AS IN THE FINE ARTS, the progress of mankind from barbarism to
civilization is marked by a gradual succession of triumphs over the rude
materialities of nature, so in the art of cookery is the progress
gradual from the earliest and simplest modes, to those of the most
complicated and refined. Plain or rudely-carved stones, tumuli, or
mounds of earth, are the monuments by which barbarous tribes denote the
events of their history, to be succeeded, only in the long course of a
series of ages, by beautifully-proportioned columns, gracefully-sculptured
statues, triumphal arches, coins, medals, and the higher efforts of the
pencil and the pen, as man advances by culture and observation to the
perfection of his facilities. So is it with the art of cookery. Man,
in his primitive state, lives upon roots and the fruits of the earth,
until, by degrees, he is driven to seek for new means, by which his
wants may be supplied and enlarged. He then becomes a hunter and a
fisher. As his species increases, greater necessities come upon him,
when he gradually abandons the roving life of the savage for the more
stationary pursuits of the herdsman. These beget still more settled
habits, when he begins the practice of agriculture, forms ideas of the
rights of property, and has his own, both defined and secured. The
forest, the stream, and the sea are now no longer his only resources for
food. He sows and he reaps, pastures and breeds cattle, lives on the
cultivated produce of his fields, and revels in the luxuries of the
dairy; raises flocks for clothing, and assumes, to all intents and
purposes, the habits of permanent life and the comfortable condition of
a farmer. This is the fourth stage of social progress, up to which the
useful or mechanical arts have been incidentally developing themselves,
when trade and commerce begin. Through these various phases, only to
live has been the great object of mankind; but, by-and-by, comforts are
multiplied, and accumulating riches create new wants. The object, then,
is not only to live, but to live economically, agreeably, tastefully,
and well. Accordingly, the art of cookery commences; and although the
fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and
the fish of the sea, are still the only food of mankind, yet these are
so prepared, improved, and dressed by skill and ingenuity, that they are
the means of immeasurably extending the boundaries of human enjoyments.
Everything that is edible, and passes under the hands of the cook, is
more or less changed, and assumes new forms. Hence the influence of that
functionary is immense upon the happiness of a household.
….
Of course we now have foods made in vats and grown from solution, synthesised foods which were never alive in the first place – the impacts these have had on life style and health are many fold (good and bad) and complicated.
This is also interesting in light of cooked food being now thought to predate ‘modern’ humans and being an instrument in our evolution. Seeing as we get more nutrition from digesting cooked foods – hence whole foods helping modern society in loosing weight!
