What is cooking. The act: cooking. The result: cuisine

Name: What is cooking. The act: cooking. The result: cuisine
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What is cooking is envisaged as a follow-up to the book Los secretos de El Bulli. This volume is the work of Bullipedia under the direction of Ferran Adrià and employing the Sapiens methodology.

Given that cooking is a broad and complex act, there are countless ways of preparing food. This book addresses all these possibilities. With its help, the reader can reflect upon what cooking really involves.

466 pages

230 x 330 mm

Hard cover

ISBN: 978-84-09-12631-6

What is cooking. The act: cooking. The result: cuisine

466 pages

230 x 330 mm

Hard cover

ISBN: 978-84-09-12631-6

What is cooking is conceived by Bullipedia to offer a holistic view of both the act and process of cooking and its result, cuisine. This work is based on the Sapiens methodology, devised by Ferran Adrià and elBullifoundation through the perspective of systemic thinking. Due to its scope and wide-ranging content, this book will offer the reader an insight into the products, elaborations and cuisines that are addressed in other volumes of this encyclopaedia.

In light of our understanding of the results produced when a combination of products, techniques and tools are allied to an energy source, What is cooking allows us to examine the circumstances of an act that human beings have undertaken since the Palaeolithic Age. To do this, cooking is reviewed from its origins in a search for its limits and an assessment of its possible applications.

Starting from Sapiens premise that a better understanding results from the ordered research of a subject, What is cooking takes the reader through all the facets of this complex and fascinating field. Only in this way, “by giving order to cooking”, can we address the different concepts, elements and characteristics within that reality. The goal of this volume is to outline the infinite possibilities and future innovations open to the world of cooking.

In keeping with the approach of Bullipedia, the focus of this research is directed towards cooking and its place in the tradition of the Western gastronomic restaurant sector. To find an answer to the question stated in the title of this volume necessitates the inclusion of contexts, visions and circumstances that result from opening new perspectives and expanding horizons. For this purpose, we also include actors, eras and scenarios in which cooking adopts meanings beyond those that pertain to gastronomic dining.

In this section is a short summary of each chapter of the book

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CHAPTER 1

LET’S START BY UNDERSTANDING LEXICAL-SEMANTIC ASPECTS

Definition of main terms By way of an introduction to the subject, we begin with definitions of the concepts that are essential to understanding the argument put forward in this book, including – naturally – ‘cooking’ and ‘cuisine’, for which we provide our definition according to the Sapiens methodology. Definition of related terms. We […]

CHAPTER 2

THE BIRTH OF CUISINE

Does cooking improve on nature? Nature in itself cannot be seen as being better nor worse; what humans do by cooking is improve on what they take from nature, according to their own standards, transforming nature’s products to make them edible or easier to digest. Nature ‘cooks’, without the need for human intervention. Nature […]

CHAPTER 3

WHAT DO HUMANS DO WHEN THEY COOK? WHAT DO THEY DO IT FOR?

Elaborating, transforming, combining, mixing, preparing, assembling, processing: cooking is all of this! How many actions can we refer to with verbs other than ‘cook’ that have the same meaning? As we will see when analysing their definitions, there are actions, such as transforming, combining, assembling or producing, which, when we perform them, imply that we […]

CHAPTER 4

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE COOK EVERY DAY: THERE IS NO SINGLE PROFILE FOR A COOK

The cook as a human being Cooks are humans and, as such, possess a body, a mind and a spirit. Here we deal with the role and relevance of each of these three elements in the culinary field. Cooking with the body, cooking with the mind, cooking with the spirit We consider the options […]

CHAPTER 5

A SCIENTIFIC AND SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF COOKING

Cooking with technique, cooking with method and cooking with technology Cooking can be understood as a technique used by cooks to obtain results; as a method, given that it follows an ordered procedure to obtain a specific result; and as a technology, which, together with technique, allows new processes and methods of elaboration/production (particularly in […]

CHAPTER 7

WHAT DO WE COOK AND HOW DO WE COOK IT?

We have looked at a number of conditioning factors when it comes to cooking, but there are many more Starting with the basics (product, technique, tool), the action of cooking can take place in thousands of ways, depending on very varied criteria, from which we make a selection in order to provide evidence in cases […]

CHAPTER 8

GIVEN WHAT WE HAVE SAID SO FAR, COOKING CAN TAKE ON DIFFERENT MEANING

Cooking is constructed like a language Starting with minimal units of meaning (product, technique, tool) from which other higher-ranking units are generated (elaborations), which in turn can articulate a discussion (menu), we see that cooking is constructed like a language. A lexicon for the understanding of cooking and gastronomy Within the framework of human […]

CHAPTER 9

AS AN ACTION THAT IS REPEATED OVER TIME, COOKING GENERATES CONSEQUENCE

Understanding the history of cooking means understanding human history, a journey narrated by the evolution of human beings from the culinary standpoint We discuss the history of cuisine from different perspectives. First of all, we consider the species of the genus Homo who cooked during prehistoric times, and the ancient civilizations of the West and […]

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What is cooking. The act: cooking. The result: cuisine