The Origins of Cooking Cookbook Review

The Origins of Cooking: Palaeolithic and Neolithic Cooking

For all the fans of Science Cookbooks, this review is for you! Today we'll take a closer look at the latest cookbook from Ferran Adrià and elBullifoundation - The Origins of Cooking.

The Origins of Cooking is the third in the Bullipedia collection developed by the elBullifoundation set up by Adrià, with the purpose of tracing the history of the fine-dining sector in western society. The book follows Coffee Sapiens (2019), and What is Cooking (2020). Within this collection, The Origins of Cooking will be the first of a series of volumes on the history of fine dining. 

Using Ferran Adrià's unique 'Sapiens' methodology, this extraordinary book examines in comprehensive detail the foundations of cuisine, starting with its earliest sources. Tracing every element of the produce, implements, and skills involved in food preparation, it asks such timely questions as: is the choice of raw food an act of cooking, or does cooking begin when specific tools are used to adapt it? Can food be considered 'cooked' when eaten in its raw state?

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The Story How Cooking Began

For Adrià, going back to the origins of things has always fascinated him. In his own words, “We cannot understand our contemporary experience if we don’t look at when, how, and where it all started.” In the beginning, humans performed the act of cooking as a way to meet their most fundamental needs, to nourish their bodies and survive. Fast forward to today and this act has developed to far exceed the basics, and has become an act of pleasure through taste. The Origins of Cooking explores this history, essential in understanding where we and our food come from. 

This book will be the base volume of a planned eight-volume systematic history of Western cuisine that’s sensitive not only to his part in that history but also to the role of anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant. The 592-page tome, a collaboration between Adrià and a team of archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and chefs, lays out an evolutionary timeline about why those in the industry do what they do. And he begins from the time before the first fire was lit.

The Origins of Cooking offers a fascinating look at how cooking began, how the first humans ate and drank, and the evolution that took place that allowed cooking and alimentation at the end of the prehistoric period, to so closely resemble what we know in the present day, despite the millennia that separate us.

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The Four Essential Stages

The Origins of Cooking discusses four essential stages: The first stage is the time before the appearance of fire in the Palaeolithic age, when cooking consisted of minor transformations to basic products. The second stage begins with the discovery of fire and the creation of a wide range of techniques without which cooking would be inconceivable today. Mastering fire for the particular purposes of providing warmth, protection and food preparation brought a complete revolution in the evolution of the human race.

The third stage arose when the nomadic hunter-gatherers began to modify their habits, giving rise to a completely different way of life, breeding animals, and cultivating plants, signaling the beginning of the Neolithic age. The final stage began with the invention of pottery, bringing all sorts of tools and receptacles that would forever revolutionize the way we cook and eat. Pottery would be the final prehistoric element to shape the foundations of the fine-dining restaurant thousands of years later.

The Origins of Cooking is both for professionals and amateurs in the food industry who want to have a deeper knowledge of the history of food, or simply for anyone who wants to understand the developments that made cooking and dining what they are today.

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Final Thoughts

The Origins of Cooking offer an in-depth exploration of the birth of cooking. Packed with intriguing text and illuminating elBullifoundation diagrams and images, The Origins of Cooking it's a must-have for every serious cook's library. If you had the opportunity to read the two previous books, you'll definitely not want to miss this one.