How was cooking invented?

Answer 1

At the time when man first got fire

The first fire was made by the historious people as you saw in night at the museum.

Fire was used for cooking many things like meat and roast vegetables

Answer 2

The oldest generally-accepted evidence for controlled use of fire by humans dates to around 700,000-800,000 years ago and is from the site of Gesher Benot Yaacov in Israel. There are claims for earlier use of fire dating back to 1.4-1.8 Million years ago from sites in East and South Africa, but these are somewhat less convincing, -isolated burnt bones or burnt sediment patches that could just as well be results of natural fires. Current thought on the main evolutionary benefits of cooking plant foods is that exposure to heat can break up toxins (many of which have long molecular chains) that make some foods difficult for humans to digest. Cooking can also make hard foods softer (e.g., tubers), allowing for easier chewing and digestion. Cooking meat also kills bacteria and parasites. Among paleoanthropologists, the most popular theory about the origin of cooking is that it was linked to selective pressure for enlarged brains among younger hominins. The brain is an expensive tissue and increasing the quantity and quality foods available to juveniles may have enabled those among them with a genetic propensity to encephalization (developing large brains) to realize their potential. Undoubtedly it was more complicated than this, but that is the short version. Fire is also useful in keeping potential predators at bay, particularly at night, and it is conceivable that early hominins started messing around with fire for defense long before it ever occurred to them to cook anything.

Answer 3

I assert that religion is the root cause for the invention of cooking.

In all historic religions, fire is one of the methods (and the most effective one) for sacrifice - the process of giving up (as in giving upward) the item to the gods makes it holy. The practice of consuming said holy item to gain it's power is well documented in many religious practices. For many in a hunter gatherer society, the easiest and most precious commodity to sacrifice is food. Thus sacrificed holy food becomes cooked food.

This is just an idea mind you, and my true belief is that the question doesn't really have one true answer. But it is the answer I like most.
It was invented by some prehistoric primatives who fell across a patch of fire, and they just finished their daily hunt and their food fell in the fire but they got it back out and noticed it tasted better burnt than raw.

Answer 4

The first cookbooks were private journals that cooks wrote themselves to remind them of specific dishes. They did not have either the complete ingredients list or the detailed instructions that modern cookbooks do, just handwritten notes as the actual recipe was in the cooks head. One cook's cookbook was useless to another cook. Sometimes when one cook trained another, the cookbook would be passed on and added to by the new cook after the old cook died.

I'm not sure it can be determined when the first cookbooks were written, as they were private journals.

Answer 5

In the paleolithic age, when the cavemen realized they could make meat eiser to eat by cooking it.

Answer 6

As long as people have known how to make fire.

Answer 7

Since people were on this earth. Otherwise they would die.

Answer 8

At the begining of caveman time