A diet consisting entirely of uncooked foods, as is sometimes advocated, would obviously require us to forgo many gastronomic pleasures. But it would be perfectly adequate and would include many such pleasures. We would not be restricted to salad vegetables, fruits and nuts, milk, raw fish, and steak tartare. Provided that the preparation of foods without heat was allowed, for example by marinating them or using the technique of fermentation, we could enjoy salami, prosciutto, cheese, and many other dairy products, and many alcoholic drinks (although neither beer nor spirits).
This diet would be expensive, since it would omit most of the cheap filling foods such as bread, potatoes, and the majority of legumes. But it would also avoid the wastage of certain nutrients which many acts of cookery entail.
Seizing on the point that it would be feasible to live on such a diet, and reminding us that our remote ancestors did just that, some authors have gone so far as not only to condemn cookery (treatment of food by heat) but also to eschew the use of artificially cold temperatures. Thus, Mr and Mrs Eugene Christian, in Uncooked Foods and How to Use Them (1904), claimed that ‘nature has provided a diet that can be selected and eaten without changing its form or chemical properties by the application of either heat or cold, and which will be perfect’. They cited the perfect health of their own family as evidence, and dwelt with fervour on the emancipating effect which their ‘natural diet’ would have on women.
When … the woman who has dreamed of a true home has settled therein, it gradually dawns upon her that, instead of being a queen, she is an improved vassal. She finds that she must stand over a miniature furnace for an hour in the morning and breathe the poisonous odor of broiling flesh, and spend another hour among the grease and slime of pots and dishes … She soon realises that the fires of the morning are hardly out until those for the noon are kindled and the labors from luncheon often lap over into the evening, and those of evening far into night. The throne over which she dreamed of wielding the queenly sceptre has been transformed into a fiery furnace, gilded with greasy pots and plates, blood and bones, over which she has unfurled the dish-rag.
The authors are sufficiently ingenious to make provision for the general desire that some food should at least be warm; and for the appetizing aromas that emanate from heated foods more readily than from cold ones. Their recipe for Sweet Potato Soup, for example, allows for it to be slightly heated (‘not enough to cook’, they explain). And further examination of their recipe section reveals that quite a high proportion of the dishes are to be warmed to ‘about 145 °F’. These concessions may be thought to weaken their case slightly, and they are not made in a number of later, less eloquent and engaging but more finely argued, books by other authors.
See also cooking; and for a different view of one kitchen activity, washing up.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
