Fascinating look at the history of cooking gadgets, appliances and gadgetry. It's easy to forget the domino effect of invention: how creating one thing creates need for several others. Bee's book reminds us of how far we have come in cooking and yet at the same time, how closely what we use to cook resembles the tools our ancestors used.

A fascinating history of how our kitchen technologies and tools, in tandem with the foods we eat, have changed us as humans.

Here's one I just finished, Sept. 2020. It's a look at the ways we've developed our cooking and eating habits.

This covers the gamut, from the first time people tried something other than roasting food (boiling, they think), and the ways we did it - starting from pits to pots. 

This history also looks at cookware, the development of ovens and stoves, cookbooks, measuring and even how we started manufacturing ice (a very American obsession). 

And of course, a look at spoons, knives and forks.

It's better than I was expecting, right up there with anything Mark Kurlansky would write, like Salt and Cod.

Totally worthy, and a recommended one from me.

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Really, really good. Who knew a history of kitchen implements could be so fascinating?

Fascinating

Such an interesting book. We spend so much time looking at history of leaders and wars. We focus on technology of computers, travel. But we never look at domestic life. How the way we cooked, the tools we invented furthered humanity. Obviously major inventions like the refrigerator or the stove but the fork, ice, the veggie peeler!

I can’t say this was the best written book I ever read but if you want to nerd out on where the wooden spoon came from this book is for you.

I enjoyed listening to the audio version while working, but I never would have sat idle to read a physical copy of the book.

I love the topic and a lot of the history was fascinating. Some parts were more dry than others, though, and the chapters could have been more connected with each other (besides just being a history of certain items).

There's a lot of trivia here. I'm not sure there's much of a larger theme, but it's really interesting.