How did cooking of food begin?

Early man used to eat raw food because he had no way of cooking it. When man at last discovered how to make fire, he used it to keep warm and to frighten away wild animals. Probably, man discovered the cooking of food by accident. Some meat may have fallen into the glowing embers of his fire. When man watched the meat turn brown and started smelling good, he tasted it and found it more satisfying than uncooked meat.

So he may have started cooking from then on. Initially, there were no pots, so he cooked on the hot stones around an open fire. The first oven was a pit lined with stones and glowing coals. Soon he began to build an oven above the ground, with an outlet for smoke, a draft, and a stone across the front opening to hold in the heat.

Later, man learned how to boil food in pits lined with large hides or skin. This was filled with water and heated to the boiling point by red hot stones. Slowly man learned to smear the clay, make it harder and placed over the fire for cooking foods, either with or without water. These were, therefore the first primitive kettles used for cooking.

Do you know that if we fail to cook certain meats and fish, or don’t cook them enough, organisms may enter our body and cause disease? For example, ‘trichinosis’ is a disease that human beings may get from eating undercooked or uncooked pork or pork products. Tapeworm and other infections by parasites are caused by eating certain undercooked fish.