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Cooking, also known as cookery, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling food over an open fire, to using , to baking in various types of , to boiling and blanching in water, reflecting local conditions, techniques and traditions. Cooking is an aspect of all human societies and a cultural universal.
Types of cooking also depend on the skill levels and training of the cooks. Cooking is done both by people in their own dwellings and by professional cooks and in and other food establishments. The term "culinary arts" usually refers to cooking that is primarily focused on the aesthetic beauty of the presentation and taste of the food.
Preparing food with heat or fire is an activity unique to . Archeological evidence of cooking fires from at least 300,000 years ago exists, but some estimate that humans started cooking up to 2 million years ago.
The expansion of agriculture, commerce, trade, and between in different regions offered cooks many new ingredients. New inventions and technologies, such as the invention of pottery for holding and boiling of water, expanded cooking techniques. Some modern cooks apply advanced scientific techniques to food preparation to further enhance the Flavoring of the dish served.
Recently, the earliest hearths have been reported to be at least 790,000 years old.
Communication between the Old World and the New World in the Columbian Exchange influenced the history of cooking. The movement of foods across the Atlantic from the New World, such as , , maize, , bell pepper, chili pepper, vanilla, pumpkin, cassava, avocado, peanut, pecan, cashew, pineapple, blueberry, Helianthus, chocolate, , , and cucurbita, had a profound effect on Old World cooking. The movement of foods across the Atlantic from the Old World, such as cattle, sheep, , wheat, , barley, rice, , , , , mustard plant, and , similarly changed New World cooking.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, food was a classic marker of identity in Europe. In the 19th-century "Age of Nationalism", cuisine became a defining symbol of national identity.
Ilaria Porciani notes that the consequences of industrial food manufacturing, like McDonald's amongst other fast food places, created a desire for an authentic cuisine. She argues that food becomes entangled with nostalgia and comes to be imagined in terms of authenticity and tradition, thus representing continuity with past generations. In this way, food undergoes a process of heritagization. In the 19th and 20th centuries, food became part of a larger process of defining national identity, which can be seen as an informal 'contract' between those who assign heritage status and the people. National intellectualists and folklorists shaped this process by researching national traditions and encouraging them to foster a sense of national unity. Governments, public institutions, cooks, gourmets also participated in this informal contract of building a culinary identity for the nation.
The Industrial Revolution brought mass-production, mass-marketing, and standardization of food. Factories processed, preserved, canned, and packaged a wide variety of foods, and processed cereals quickly became a defining feature of the American breakfast. In the 1920s, frozen food, , and fast food restaurants emerged.
Naturally occurring ingredients contain various amounts of molecules called proteins, and . They also contain water and minerals. Cooking involves a manipulation of the chemical properties of these molecules.
The interaction of heat and carbohydrate is complex. Polysaccharide such as starch tend to break down into more digestible Monosaccharide. If the sugars are heated so that all water of crystallisation is driven off, caramelization starts, with the sugar undergoing thermal decomposition with the formation of carbon, and other breakdown products producing caramel. Similarly, the heating of sugars and proteins causes the Maillard reaction, a basic flavor-enhancing technique.
An emulsion of starch with fat or water can, when gently heated, provide thickening to the dish being cooked. In European cuisine cooking, a mixture of butter and flour called a roux is used to thicken liquids to make stews or sauces. In Asian cooking, a similar effect is obtained from a mixture of rice or corn starch and water. These techniques rely on the properties of starches to create simpler mucilaginous saccharides during cooking, which causes the familiar thickening of . This thickening will break down, however, under additional heat.
Fats are one of the three main macronutrient groups in human diet, along with and , and the main components of common food products like milk, butter, tallow, lard, salt pork, and . They are a major and dense source of food energy for many animals and play important structural and metabolic functions, in most living beings, including energy storage, waterproofing, and thermal insulation. The human body can produce the fat it requires from other food ingredients, except for a few essential fatty acids that must be included in the diet. Dietary fats are also the carriers of some Flavoring and aroma ingredients and that are Lipophilicity.
To prevent those injuries there are protections such as cooking clothing, anti-slip shoes, fire extinguisher and more.
The sterilizing effect of cooking depends on temperature, cooking time, and technique used. Some food spoilage bacteria such as Clostridium botulinum or Bacillus cereus can form spores that survive cooking or boiling, which then germination and regrow after the food has cooled. This makes it unsafe to reheat cooked food more than once.
Cooking increases the digestibility of many foods which are inedible or poisonous when raw. For example, raw cereal grains are hard to digest, while are toxic when raw or improperly cooked due to the presence of phytohaemagglutinin, which is inactivated by cooking for at least ten minutes at .
Food safety depends on the safe preparation, handling, and storage of food. Food spoilage bacteria proliferate in the "Danger zone" temperature range from ; therefore, food should not be stored in this temperature range. Washing of hands and surfaces, especially when handling different meats, and keeping raw food separate from cooked food to avoid cross-contamination, are good practices in food preparation. Foods prepared on plastic cutting boards may be less likely to harbor bacteria than wooden ones. Washing and disinfecting cutting boards, especially after use with raw meat, poultry, or seafood, reduces the risk of contamination.
Sulforaphane, a glucosinolate breakdown product, is present in vegetables such as broccoli, and is mostly destroyed when the vegetable is boiled. Although there has been some basic research on how sulforaphane might exert beneficial effects in vivo, there is no high-quality evidence for its efficacy against human diseases.
The United States Department of Agriculture has studied retention data for 16 vitamins, 8 minerals, and alcohol for approximately 290 foods across various cooking methods.
Several studies published since 1990 indicate that cooking meat at high temperature creates heterocyclic amines (HCA's), which are thought to increase cancer risk in humans. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute found that human subjects who ate beef rare or medium-rare had less than one third the risk of stomach cancer than those who ate beef medium-well or well-done. While avoiding meat or eating meat raw may be the only ways to avoid HCA's in meat fully, the National Cancer Institute states that cooking meat below creates "negligible amounts" of HCA's. Also, microwaving meat before cooking may reduce HCAs by 90% by reducing the time needed for the meat to be cooked at high heat. are found in some food, and may be produced by some cooking processes from proteins or from nitrites used as food preservatives; cured meat such as bacon has been found to be carcinogenic, with links to colon cancer. Vitamin C, which is added to cured meat, however, reduces nitrosamine formation.
Baking, grilling or broiling food, especially starchy foods, until a toasted crust is formed generates significant concentrations of acrylamide. This discovery in 2002 led to international health concerns. Subsequent research has however found that it is not likely that the acrylamides in burnt or well-cooked food cause cancer in humans; Cancer Research UK categorizes the idea that burnt food causes cancer as a "myth".
Cooking food at high temperature may create advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) that are believed to be involved in a number of diseases, including diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, as well as in ageing. AGEs are a group of compounds that are formed between reducing sugars and amino acids via Maillard reaction. These compounds impart colors, tastes and smells that are specific to these food, but may also be deleterious to health. Dry heat (e.g. in roasting or grilling) can significantly increase the production of AGEs, as well as food rich in animal protein and fats. The production of AGEs during cooking can be significantly reduced by cooking in water or moist heat, reducing the cooking times and temperatures, as well as by first marinating the meat in acidic ingredients such as lemon juice and vinegar.
Important contributions have been made by scientists, chefs and authors such as Hervé This (chemist), Nicholas Kurti (physicist), Peter Barham (physicist), Harold McGee (author), Shirley Corriher (biochemist, author), Robert Wolke (chemist, author.) It is different for the application of scientific knowledge to cooking, that is "molecular cooking" (for the technique) or "molecular cuisine" (for a culinary style), for which chefs such as Raymond Blanc, Philippe and Christian Conticini, Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Pierre Gagnaire (chef).
Chemical processes central to cooking include hydrolysis (in particular beta elimination of pectins, during the thermal treatment of plant tissues), pyrolysis, and glycation reactions wrongly named Maillard reactions.Handbook of Molecular Gastronomy, CRC Press, 2021
Cooking foods with heat depends on many factors: the specific heat of an object, thermal conductivity, and (perhaps most significantly) the difference in temperature between the two objects. Thermal diffusivity is the combination of specific heat, conductivity and density that determines how long it will take for the food to reach a certain temperature.
"Home-cooking" may be associated with comfort food, and some commercially produced foods and restaurant meals are presented through advertising or packaging as having been "home-cooked", regardless of their actual origin. This trend began in the 1920s and is attributed to people in urban areas of the U.S. wanting homestyle food even though their schedules and smaller kitchens made cooking harder.
Scientific aspects
The scientific study of cooking has become known as molecular gastronomy. This is a subdiscipline of food science concerning the physical and chemical transformations that occur during cooking. Molecular Gastronomy from Encyclopedia Britannica
Home-cooking and commercial cooking
Home cooking has traditionally been a process carried out informally in a home or around a Communal oven, and can be enjoyed by all members of the family, although in many cultures women bear primary responsibility. Cooking is also often carried out outside of personal quarters, for example at restaurants, or schools. Bakeries were one of the earliest forms of cooking outside the home, and bakeries in the past often offered the cooking of pots of food provided by their customers as an additional service. In the present day, factory food preparation has become common, with many "ready-to-eat" as well as "ready-to-cook" foods being prepared and cooked in factories and home cooks using a mixture of , and factory made foods together to make a meal. The nutritional value of including more commercially prepared foods has been found to be inferior to home-made foods. Home-cooked meals tend to be healthier with fewer calories, and less saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium on a per calorie basis while providing more Dietary fiber, calcium, and iron. The ingredients are also directly sourced, so there is control over authenticity, taste, and nutritional value. The superior nutritional quality of home-cooking could therefore play a role in preventing chronic disease. Cohort studies following the elderly over 10 years show that adults who cook their own meals have significantly lower mortality, even when controlling for confounding variables.
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