Wrangham, Richard. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Basic Books, 2009.
Francesco, Berna, Paul Goldberg, Liora Kolska Horwitz, James Brink, Sharon Holt, Marion Bamford, and Michael Chazan. “Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 109, no. 20 (2012): 1215–1220.
At present the earliest secure archaeological evidence for the use of human-controlled fire is “only” one million years old.
Leslie, Eliza. Directions for Cookery, in Its Various Branches, 10th ed. Philadelphia, 1840.
Old Peninsular. “My Peninsular Medal.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 68, no. 417 (July 1850): 20–32.
Scott, Walter. Waverly. Vol. 1. James Ballantyne and Co., 1814.
Shields, G. O. Camping and Camp Outfits: A Manual of Instruction for Young and Old Sportsmen. Rand, McNally & Co., 1890.
Mix water and clay with your fingers into a stiff mud, and work until it is putty-like. Roll it out with a bottle to a half-inch in thickness, and large enough to entirely envelop the bird or fish. Draw your bird, wash, salt, and pepper inside, but leave the feathers on. Enclose it in this cake of mud, and smooth over the seams with your fingers. Dig a small hole in the ground in the edge of a wood-fire, place it in, and cover with hot ashes first; on the top of the hot ashes place live coals; replenish the coals now and then, and allow it to cook from one to two hours, according to age or size. When removed, you will find the clay cooked like potter’s ware. Break the clay, and the feathers will come with it, thus leaving the bird clean and white. Baste with butter, and eat while hot. Clean or remove entrails of a fish, wash, and season with salt and pepper; but leave the scales on, and treat as above. If not convenient to roll the clay out as above, it may be mixed thinner, and plastered into the feathers or scales.
Bottéro, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Cotgrave, Randle, comp. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Adam Islip, 1611.
Foüace: f. A thicke cake hastily baked, on a hot hearth, by hot imbers layed on it, and burning coals over them; . . . also Foüasse.
In the Book of Ezekiel (4:9-15), an angry Yahweh condemns his people to eat bread baked under ashes in the manner of barley bread, only with human excrement as the fuel. When the prophet exclaims how gross that is, Yahweh relents, saying, “Okay, you can use cow dung.”
White, John. A Treatise on the Art of Baking, with a Preliminary Introduction. Anderson & Bryce, 1828.
Pegge, Samuel. The Forme of Cury. 1780. First published in 1390.
Hess, Karen, ed. Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats. Columbia University Press, 1995.
Hazard, Thomas Robinson. The Jonny-Cake Papers of “Shepherd Tom.” Subscribers, 1915.
Stevenson, Jane and Peter Davidson, eds. The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened. Prospect Books, 1997.
Hale, C. Clark. The Great American Barbeque & Grilling Manual. Abacus, 2000.
Orr, N. De Witt’s Connecticut Cook Book, and Housekeeper’s Assistant. Robert M. De Witt, 1871.
Kitchiner, William. The Cook’s Oracle. Whittaker, Teacher and Co., 1829.
Nott, John. The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary. C. Rivington, 1723.
Child, Lydia Maria Francis. The American Frugal Housewife, 27th ed. Samuel S. & William Wood, 1841.
. . . Flip makes very nice pancakes. In this case, nothing is done but to sweeten your mug of beer with molasses; put in one glass of N. E. rum; heat it till it foams, by putting in a hot poker; and stir it up with flour as thick as other pancakes. [Then fry in bacon grease or other hot fat, and serve with molasses. To be honest, we did better adding a pinch of salt and an egg.]
Scammell, H. B., ed. Scammell’s Universal Treasure-House of Useful Knowledge. H. A. Hess, 1885
Ruperto de Nola. Libre del Coch. Translation by Robin Carroll-Mann, 1525. www.florilegium.org.
Perry, Charles. “The Taste for Layered Bread among the Nomadic Turks and the Central Asian Origins of Baklava.” In A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, edited by Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper, 87–92. Taurus Parke, 2000.
Matthew Amster-Burton. “Scallion Pancakes.” In Simple Cooking 72, edited by John and Matt Lewis Thorne, (January/February 2001).
Farey, John. General View of the Agriculture and Minerals of Derbyshire. Vol 1. McMillan, 1811.
Crawford, Barbara E. and Beverley Ballin Smith. The Biggins, Papa Stour, Shetland: The History and Archaeology of a Royal Norwegian Farm. Monograph Series 15. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1999.
Hansson, Ann-Marie. “Pre- and Protohistoric Bread in Sweden: A Definition and a Review” Civilisations 49 (2002): 183–190.
Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, rev. ed. Strahan et al., 1774.
Mallmann, Francis. Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way. With Peter Kaminsky. Artisan, 2009.
Craig, O. E., H. Saul, A. Lucquin, Y. Nishida, et al. “Earliest evidence for the use of pottery” Nature 496 (18 April 2013): 351–354.
Wu, Xiaohong, Chi Zhang, Paul Goldberg, David Cohen, Yan Pam, Trina Arpin, and Ofer Bar-Yosef. “Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China.” Science 336, no. 6089 (June 2012): 1696–1700.
Nieuwenhuyse, Olivier P., Peter M. M. G. Akkermans, and Johannes van der Plicht. “Not So Coarse, Nor Always Plain: The Earliest Pottery of Syria.” Antiquity 84, no. 323 (2010): 71–85.
Akkermans, Peter M. M. G., Rene Cappers, Chiara Cavallo, Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, Bonnie Nilhamn, and Iris N. Otte. “Investigating the Early Pottery Neolithic of Northern Syria: New Evidence from Tell Sabi Abyad.” American Journal of Archaeology, (January 2006).
Lemme, Chuck. “The Ideal Pot.” In Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, 1988: The Cooking Pot, edited by Tom Jaine, 82–98. Prospect Books, 1989.
The earliest use of pottery has long been believed a product of the Neolithic revolution, accompanying the domestication of plants and animals and many other sweeping cultural changes. But tantalizing new evidence from Japan and China pushes the ceramic horizon back significantly into late Ice Age hunter-gatherer days. Chemical analysis shows pots securely dating to 15,000 to 20,000 years before the present that had predominantly contained fish and been exposed to fire.
Spurling, Hilary, ed. Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book. Viking, 1986.
Archival recipe courtesy of the Plymouth Antiquarian Society, Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Druett, Joan. Petticoat Whalers: Whaling Wives at Sea, 1820-1920. Harper Collins, 1991.
Today has been our doughnut fare, the first we have ever had. The Steward, Boy and myself have been at work all the morning. We fried or boiled three tubs for the forecastle — one for the steerage. In the afternoon about one tub full for the cabin and right good were they too, not the least taste of oil — they came out the pots perfectly dry. The skimmer was so large that you could take out 1⁄2 of a peck at a time. I enjoyed it mightily.
Groen, Jan de. de Verstandige Kock, oft Sorghvuldige Huyshoudster. M. Doornick, 1668.
“A Letter from an Officer, Shewing How He Made His Own Bread in Scotland.” The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle 16 (1746): 374.
In America, the term “Dutch oven” was sometimes used for the bake-kettle, a usage which grew to be very common by the twentieth century. (When this denotation started and why is obscure. It is notable, but probably unrelated, that a 1667 Dutch cookbook did outline a couple of tarts “baked with fire below and on top,” a rather unusual technique at the time.) In England, the term “Dutch oven” invariably referred to the reflecting roaster Americans often called “tin kitchen” or “Yankee baker”; many American cookbook authors followed the English usage. To add to the nomenclature confusion, some New Englanders called a masonry oven which protruded from a house and had its own roof a Dutch oven.
Tibbott, S. Minwel. Baking in Wales. National Museum of Wales, 1991.
———. Welsh Fare: A Selection of Traditional Recipes. National Museum of Wales, 1976.
Tkačova, Lenka. “Near-Eastern Tannurs Now & Then: A Close-Up View of Bread Ovens with Respect to the Archaeological Evidence and Selected Ethnographical Examples from Khabur Region,” Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis. Masaryk University, 2013.
Bottéro, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham. Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789. Touchstone, 1996.
Moussette, Marcel. “Kitchen Stove or Potager?” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology 8, no. 1 (1976). www.jstor.org/stable/1493561.
Brewer, Priscilla J. From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America. University Press, 2000.
Cooper, Jane. Woodstove Cookery: At Home on the Range. Storey Publishing, 1977.
Practical advice about selecting, using, and maintaining a cookstove.
Edleson, Max and Eva Edleson. A Guide for Making a Versatile, Efficient, and Easy to Use Wood-Fired Oven. Hand Print Press, 2012.
Wetterstrom, Wilma. “Foraging and Farming in Egypt.” In The Archaeology of Africa: Foods, Metals and Towns, edited by Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah, and Alex Okpoko, 165–226. Routledge, 1993.
Wood, William. New England’s Prospect. Tho. Cotes, 1634.
In summer these Indian women, when lobsters be in their plenty and prime, they dry them to keep for winter, erecting scaffolding in the hot sunshine, making fires likewise underneath them (by whose smoke the flies are expelled) till the substance remain hard and dry. In this manner they dry bass and other fishes without salt, cutting them very thin to dry suddenly before the flies spoil them or the rain moist them, having a special care to hang them in their smoking houses in the night and dankish weather.
Coe, Sophie D. America’s First Cuisines. University of Texas Press, 1994.
Apparently, some fun-loving, non-risk-averse Mongols with an understanding of sous-vide cooking have recently kicked the knorkhog up a notch. Not content to use only retained heat, they set the steel or aluminum milk can — lid locked on! — directly on the fire. Aside from the occasional shrapnel, the resulting stew must be extraordinary. (Warning — trying this yourself will probably invalidate your homeowners’ insurance.)
Evans, Susan Toby and David L. Webster, eds. Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia. Garland, 2001.
Raab, L. Mark, Jim Cassidy, Andrew Yatsko, and William J. Howard. California Maritime Archaeology: A San Clemente Island Perspective. AltaMira Press, 2009.
Doerper, John and Alf Collins, eds. “Pacific Northwest Indian Cooking Vessels.” In Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, 1988: The Cooking Pot, edited by Tom Jaine, 28-43. Prospect Books, 1989.
Hayward, Vicki. “False Traditions: Pots in the New Hebrides.” In Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, 1988: The Cooking Pot, edited by Tom Jaine, 68–70. Prospect Books, 1989.
Marcoux, Paula. “Bread and Permanence.” In Exploring Atlantic Transitions: Archaeologies of Transience and Permanence in New Found Lands, Peter E. Pope and Shannon Lewis-Simpson, eds. Mongograph no. 7. Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology. Boydell Press, 2013.
Boily, Lise and Jean-François Blanchette. The Bread Ovens of Quebec. National Museum of Man, 1979.
Denzer, Kiko. Build Your Own Earth Oven, 3rd ed. With Hannah Field. Hand Print Press, 2007.
Jaine, Tom. Building a Wood-Fired Oven for Bread and Pizza. Prospect Books, 1997.
Wing, Daniel and Alan Scott. The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens. Chelsea Green, 1999.
Holme, Randle. The Academy of Armory. 1688.
Wright, Clifford A. Cucina Paradiso: The Heavenly Food of Sicily. Simon & Shuster, 1992.
Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife. Edited by Michael R. Best. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986. First published in 1615.
Wood, Ed. World Sourdoughs from Antiquity: Authentic Recipes for Modern Bakers. Ten Speed Press, 1996.
Chattman, Lauren. Bread Making: A Home Course. Storey Publishing, 2011.
Hamelman, Jeffrey. Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, 2nd ed. John Wiley, 2013.
Miscovich, Richard. From the Wood-Fired Oven: New and Traditional Techniques for Cooking and Baking with Fire. Chelsea Green, 2013.
Hounihan, J.D. J.D. Hounihan’s Bakers’ and Confectioners’ Guide and Treasure. 1877.
Archival recipe courtesy of the Plymouth Antiquarian Society, Plymouth, Massachusetts.
With the influx of cheap, compact, easy-to-use kitchen scales on today’s market, no cook embarking on a baking project need rely on imprecise measuring cups. That said, a volume cheat sheet for ingredients commonly rendered in ounces in this book may turn out handy on the occasion when the cook is working without a scale.
Ingredient |
Weight of One Cup |
|
Wheat or rye flour |
41⁄2 ounces |
|
Cornmeal |
51⁄2 ounces |
|
Sugar |
71⁄4 ounces |
|
Most liquids |
8 ounces |
|
Leaven 8 ounces |