It seems that for as long as humans have been walking the Earth, they’ve been trying to pick out what separates them from mere “beasts.” Everything from language to sex positions to the use of tools has been proposed, but simple observation contradicts each claim. And while I’ve never understood the particular obsession with distancing ourselves from our furrier cousins, there is one thing that, I think it is fair to say, does separate humans from other animals: the kitchen.
As far as I know, no other species cooks its food. And humans don’t just apply heat to what they eat (though the first cooking probably was just that) — we turn cooking into an art form. My mother has often said of baking, “Seriously, who thought to herself ‘So I’ll just take this thing that comes out of the back end of a chicken, mix it with some ground grain and some crystallized sucrose, apply some heat and voila! A cake!’” When you think about it, many of the things we do to edible flora and fauna really are pretty astonishing, and there are people who make their livings shocking one culture with the dietary delights of others. But this exchange of foreign food ideas is nothing new.
Many historians will cite the presence of agriculture as one of the necessary criteria for defining a culture as a civilization. If I had to make a guess, I’d say that the beginning of agriculture probably spawned the beginning of cooking simply by way of people trying to spice things up a bit.
As civilizations grew and traded with others, among the most important and valuable things traded were edible goods. As cultures interacted, so did the ingredients of their traditional cuisines. Can you imagine what Italian food was like before the introduction of the indigenous American fruit, the tomato? What English culture was like before the introduction of Asian tea? A French fondue without Indonesian nutmeg?
As a species, and as a culture, we celebrate with food, nurture with food and mourn with food. But it’s not the ingredients of the meal — the actual nutrients that sustain you — that make the act of sharing it one of great social importance. The gesture of bringing a casserole to someone coping with an injury or a death wouldn’t be the same if the time hadn’t been taken to prepare the ingredients, mix them together and finally bake them. Cooking doesn’t just transform the food’s chemical structure, it transforms its meaning.
Once upon a time, cooking took place over an open hearth. For the most part, the hearth has since been replaced by stoves, ovens and more recently microwaves, but hearth and home remain intimately associated. Typically, the hearth is understood to symbolize warmth, but more directly, I think it symbolizes food (and food preparation) and thus warmth, literal and figurative, simply by extension. I’ve often joked that all I really need in a house is a good kitchen and a small bathroom (no Lawn room for me, thanks!) — everything else I could easily do without.
Across cultures and time, the kitchen has been at the center of the home. In the past, families literally ate, worked and slept in the kitchen. Even today, with the wealth of function-specific rooms we have in modern single-family homes, it is a well-documented phenomenon in my family that regardless of how many guests are present or how much seating is available in other rooms, everyone is often in the kitchen.
My own kitchen is my pride and joy, and nothing gives me more pleasure than welcoming my friends into it to share a meal. So while I can’t say I’ve ever been inclined to want to distance myself from all the other wondrous species of the animal kingdom, I happily embrace the pots, pans, knives and other tools of my kitchen, and proclaim myself human.
Sarah’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at s.brummett@cavalierdaily.com
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