Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Culinary arts
Summary
Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of food preparation, cooking, and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as restaurants – are commonly called chefs or cooks, although, at its most general, the terms culinary artist and culinarian are also used. Table manners (the table arts) are sometimes referred to as a culinary art.
Expert chefs are in charge of making meals that are both aesthetically beautiful and delicious. This often requires understanding of food science, nutrition, and diet. Delicatessens and relatively large institutions like hotels and hospitals rank as their principal workplaces after restaurants.
The origins of culinary arts began with primitive humans roughly 2 million years ago. Various theories exist as to how early humans used fire to cook meat. According to anthropologist Richard Wrangham, author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, primitive humans simply tossed a raw hunk of meat into the flames and watched it sizzle. Another theory claims humans may first have savoured roasted meat by chance when the flesh of a beast killed in a forest fire was found to be more appetizing and easier to chew and digest than conventional raw meat.
Culinary techniques improved with the introduction of earthenware and stoneware, the domestication of livestock, and advancements in agriculture. In early civilizations, the primary employers of professional chefs were kings, aristocrats, or priests. The divide between professional chefs cooking for the wealthy and peasants cooking for their families engendered the development of many cuisines.
Much of the study of culinary arts in Europe was organized by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a man famous for his quote "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", which has since been mistranslated and oversimplified into "You are what you eat". Other people helped to parse out the different parts of food science and gastronomy.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related concepts (1)
Cooking
Cooking, cookery, or culinary arts is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling food over an open fire to using electric stoves, to baking in various types of ovens, reflecting local conditions. Types of cooking also depend on the skill levels and training of the cooks. Cooking is done both by people in their own dwellings and by professional cooks and chefs in restaurants and other food establishments.