9th February 2007

My Culinary Week

I’ve had some friends over visiting for the last few days, and so have been out for a couple of meals. At the start of these, as is the case in most restaurants, we were presented with bread and butter. These two things form part of almost every traditional diet, but just when did we discover them? Actually, it was between 5000 and 12000 years ago that man stopped chasing all his food and began herding and farming instead.

Climactic changes at the end of the Ice Age encouraged more edible plants such as wheat to grow. As we learned to harvest food, and replace the seeds, we were able to settle in one place and build a home, as well as hone our cooking skills. As raw wheat is actually indigestible, historians conclude that at first it was roasted, ground, mixed with water and made into cakes on hot stones, somewhere around 9000BC. These flatbreads still survive in various forms today in most cultures: pitta, nan, lavash, tortilla, chapatti and so on. However, back then it really was the perfect food, as we were still only thinking about whether or not to invent pottery, and these breads could be made and eaten without containers or cutlery. In the Middle Ages, trencher bread was used to make a plate for meat dishes, and then the soggy remains were given to the dogs, or the poor!

Going back to just after the Ice Age, the question everyone was asking was, ‘what should we put on the bread?’ Between 9000BC and 6000BC, we began to domesticate animals, starting with goats and sheep. This gave us meat, wool, leather, fat, bones, dung (to fertilize the newly found crops), and crucially milk. As with flatbreads, milk in both its natural and fermented state is still part of the vast majority of traditional cuisines, from yoghurt to Indian dahi. The discovery of milk was apparently followed very closely by the invention of butter, and Eureka we had the answer as to what should go on top of bread.