Cooking Techniques

The ability to control fire may date to 500,000 bce. No one knows exactly when, where, how, and why humans concluded that cooked foods were worth the effort of building a fire, waiting for the food to be done, and suffering the periodic losses when foods were accidentally burned beyond the point of being edible, or a fire raged out of control. What seems probable is that fire discouraged predators and scavengers from competing for the kills and that humans learned that heating coarse foods, such as game, tubers, fibrous vegetables, and grains, made the foods easier to chew. People in prehistoric times most likely came to believe that cooked foods were tastier, and from this cultural conclusion, fine cookery evolved.