Kathy Phillips, age 13, of Santa Cruz, Calif., for her question:
WHEN DID PEOPLE START COOKING FOOD?
We don't know when people learned the art of cooking food. But we know prehistoric man cooked some of his food before he knew how to make fire. He cooked over burning wood taken from fires that had started naturally. Man learned to make fire about 500,000 years ago.
Some prehistoric people who lived in very hot climates, such as the deserts in the southwestern part of the United States, learned how to cook by baking or drying food on hot, flat stones placed in the sun.
The first broiling was done by prehistoric man when he placed food on a stick and held it over hot coals. Later this stick was made of an iron rod called a spit, which was put over the fire. The food was pushed on the stick and turned frequently to cook it on all sides and to keep it from burning.
Cooking on a flat stove with a fire built around it was also known very early. And as people continued to learn about cooking, they dug pits in the ground, lined them with stones and built fires on them. After the stones were heated, the food was placed on them, covered with green leaves and left to cook.
Boiling, which is cooking in water, could not be done until the invention of containers which held water and which were not destroyed by heat. Among the earliest pots were those made by prehistoric people about 6000 B.C.
Skin bags and birch bark kettles were used early by the American Indians. Cooking was done by dropping hot stones into the containers of food. As the stones cooled off, more hot ones were added.
The ancient Egyptian knew at least six forms of cooking including baking, broiling, roasting, boiling, frying and stewing.
The Romans were famous for their banquets. They cooked over charcoal on grills.
Permanent types of ovens have been found among the ruins of ancient Pompeii. And the manuscripts of the Middle Ages tell us that boiling and broiling were the two most common methods of cooking at that time.
A type of bread was often made in an oven which resembled a beehive. Such ovens were found only in the "great houses" of the wealthy or in public bakeries of Europe until long after America was discovered.
In colonial North America, however, nearly every home had an oven of its own because homes were usually far apart and the forests were full of dangers.
Closed stoves of brick or porcelain tile have been in use in northern European countries since the end of the Middle Ages. Cast iron stoves were first used in Alsace as early as 1490. But it was not until the 1800s that cookstoves becamse popular.
Before that time, the people in America and other countries cooked in kettles over fireplaces or on an open fires outdoors. Ovens for baking were also built into fireplaces.