Bee Wilson asks us to consider an ordinary kitchen implement — the wooden spoon. Then she analyses it. She tells us why it’s still the same as it was ages ago. It’s useful. It doesn’t conduct heat, or scratch pans. There’s a sense in which we take it for granted. The thing is, we take lots and lots of things for granted in the world of food. Wilson asks why — why are pots and pans the way they are? Or knives? This is a terrific book on the history of things you might not have thought had a history. But they do. Like cooking itself, which, as she points out, might well be the thing that helped us evolve into human beings.
