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elenajohansen 's review for:
Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat
by Bee Wilson
informative
slow-paced
As a broad overview of the history of kitchen technology, with a focus on Western cooking, I think this is a successful and enjoyable work, well-researched and laid out with a structure based on individual technologies rather than a strictly chronological march through time.
That structure did mean revisiting Victorian kitchens frequently in each section, and the repetitiveness did wear thin by the end. Also, the "end" of the book came quite abruptly, with one of those end-of-chapter vignettes about coffee; as I was reading digitally, I thought I still had plenty more book to go, but I guess the end notes took up more space than I was expecting.
I'll remember this more in the long run, I think, for some surprising facts I learned from it. Two examples: the utterly mundane and standard two-wheel can opener I've been using my whole life was actually brand new when I was a child; and there's archaeological evidence that overbites developed in response changes in our utensil technology, supported across multiple cultures, which I find fascinating.
I enjoyed reading it, and I'd certainly recommend it to fellow kitchen nerds, but not necessarily deep history buffs, as it's a light read that doesn't go deeply into any one of its many subjects under the kitchen-tech umbrella.
That structure did mean revisiting Victorian kitchens frequently in each section, and the repetitiveness did wear thin by the end. Also, the "end" of the book came quite abruptly, with one of those end-of-chapter vignettes about coffee; as I was reading digitally, I thought I still had plenty more book to go, but I guess the end notes took up more space than I was expecting.
I'll remember this more in the long run, I think, for some surprising facts I learned from it. Two examples: the utterly mundane and standard two-wheel can opener I've been using my whole life was actually brand new when I was a child; and there's archaeological evidence that overbites developed in response changes in our utensil technology, supported across multiple cultures, which I find fascinating.
I enjoyed reading it, and I'd certainly recommend it to fellow kitchen nerds, but not necessarily deep history buffs, as it's a light read that doesn't go deeply into any one of its many subjects under the kitchen-tech umbrella.