Cooking

For the craft in general, see cookery. For more terms, see Cook (disambiguation).

Cooking (from the Latin coquere, " cook, boil, mature" borrowed ) is in the narrower sense, heating a liquid to the boiling point and, in addition, the cooking and preparation of food in general, regardless of the method of preparation such as baking ( cooking dough or a batter ), frying or grilling ( dry heating ). Derived from the Occupation Chef.

According to the different boiling points ( for example, liquid nitrogen is 77.36 K ( -195.79 ° C) in the molecular kitchen or cooking oil when frying 140-190 ° C) a wide temperature range is possible.

History

Cooking is one of the oldest and most important cultural techniques of man. The earliest traces of food preparation tools 1.5 million years old: found in Kenya, with stone blades scraped antelope bones and open between stones marrow bones. The decisive step was the mastery of fire made ​​by Homo erectus (see Prehistoric fire use). The earliest known traces, whose age is estimated to be about 500,000 years are hearths with charred bones in the cave of Zhoukoudian in Beijing and remains of huts with hearths at the site Terra Amata, near Nice. Further, hardly younger traces can be found throughout Europe. In Africa, the oldest traces are around 100,000 years old.

The importance of cooking lies in the chemical reactions which occur in the case: the cellular tissue is loosened, proteins coagulate, gelled connective tissue, fats liquefy gelatinized starch, minerals are released and formed flavors. In addition to the ease of digestibility of meat and fruit, which accounted for until then the main part of the diet, cooking caused mainly an enormous expansion of the food supply: Until then, indigestible, inedible or even poisonous animals and plants could be rendered edible by cooking, including starchy grasses and roots, some of whose descendants eventually became staple foods. Next affects cooking sterilizing and preserving what has a direct impact on the health and improves the possibilities for storing. In the wake of the invention of cooking changed the human anatomy, especially the teeth: it reduced greatly, which was also the development of the vocal tract, and thus the language conducive.

The early cooking techniques before the invention of pottery and metallurgy can be reconstructed only indirectly to a large extent, from descriptions of traditional methods in historical times, and from the observation today or, until recently, existing stone-age societies. The most primitive method are certainly grilling, roasting in hot ashes and roasting on heated stones in the fire, which is suitable for meat, roots and grains. For cooking in the strict sense, ie the heating in liquid, served Burrow and natural vessels such as shells, ostrich eggs, turtle shells, etc., or tighter knit baskets whose contents were cooked through to be put in glutheißer cooking stones. Earth ovens are today where food is wrapped in use, in sheets, topped with hot stones and grass and earth isolated, slow braise. In East Timor is still cooked in thick bamboo poles food in an open fire. In prehistoric China food were covered with mud or clay and then braised in the fire.

Another method was meat (even with cereal or vegetables) cooked in animal skins, stomachs or intestines over the fire. Herodotus describes it this way: " In Scythia, the procedure when cooking follows. The skinned animal's flesh from the bones and thrown into the cauldron, that if such on the spot. If no boiler on the spot, so all the meat is put into the stomach of the animal, poured water and add cooked with the help of bone. The bones burn very well, and the stomach takes easily dissolved by the bone meat. So boils the beef, or what kind of animal it is otherwise, himself, " How old are such methods can not be determined because they leave no traces, but they are probably the original form of the sausage, which fall within yourself courts like Haggis or Palatinate pig's stomach has defeated.