Instructions
Why do we cook food?
I don’t mean pose this in the tangible ‘I’m feeling peckish, let’s make something to eat’ kind of way, but rather in the grander, more philosophical sense. I’ll even settle for its physiological meaning.
After all, we are the sole organism on this planet that has resolved to apply heat to the ingredients we intend to consume. To best of our archaeological knowledge, the taming of fire and its application to food happened about 300,000 years ago, towards the end of the Lower Paleolithic period. It probably started by accident, but the effects were significant in evolutionary terms.
Food’s primary role is to provide nourishment – a complex blend of vitamins, minerals, proteins and sugars that enable us to exist. There is a wide range of foods that can satisfy these requirements, but the issue is bio-availability. A cow, for example, can extract the nutrients it needs by consuming grass. Yet a human would yield nothing more than a bellyache from the same patch of paddock. Why? Bio-availability – the capacity to extract and utilise the content of a substance through digestion. Cows can extract and use cellulose (a sugar in grass) while humans cannot.
Fire was the key that made some indigestible foods edible, and allowed us to extract more nutrition from other foods, by making their goodness more bio-available. The more important of these was protein. Once cooked, protein was absorbed in far greater amounts, allowing humans to develop larger body mass and more complex brains. In addition, greater utility of ingredients meant that less total food was required, freeing up our ancestors from the endless cycle of hunting, and allowing for population growth.
So there’s the historical answer. But what’s the point of cooking food today?
In fact, it’s a bit of a line ball decision. We should eat a considerable amount of raw food (especially vegetables) for better health, but cooking meats and fish is a way of making them safe to eat, as well as easier to digest.
However, the main reason we cook food in 2010 is simple comfort: our keen sense of human pleasure. On a cold winter’s day, nothing is more calming and invigorating than a steaming plate of food. It will, quite literally, warm you from the inside out.
And of all the comfortingly-warm, winter foods, nothing can beat the humble crumble. Lusciously sweet fruit, crisp biscuit topping, and a little lashing of heavy cream.
Indulgent? Yes, but also very humanising. And wasn’t that the point of evolution.
Nutmeg-scented apple and rhubarb crumble