Cooking Equals Art Essay

You know the saying â€Å"The Way To A Man’s Heart is Through His Stomach†, well I think everyone would agree with me when I say the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach. Cooking has to be done during one’s life time; it is not something that can be easily avoidable. It’s something many people do on regular basics and has become an expert in. What you do every day consider art. Art can be acknowledged as something that is created and then just consumed. Yes. Cooking is art because cooking is doing something that you do repeatedly, and have a general or higher knowledge in. Cooking takes you to the highest of the high. Exactly what is cooking? Something so essential has a very simple meaning. It is the time process of food preparation through applied heat. While cooking, a person has to keep in mind a lot of other factors that finally lead to the product of making delicious food. Art according to the OED is the skills of doing something that you have had knowledge of or practice. (Art) Comparing that to cooking, we can easily pop in cooking where art is and say; cooking according to the OED is the skills of doing something that you have had knowledge of or practice. That however is not true for both of those statements because one man’s masterpiece of art can be 5 dramatic lines on a canvas, while one man’s masterpiece of cooking can just be a plate with steak, peas and cranberry sauce. The assortment and place of the line and food on a plate though would be considering art. Our ancient ancestors first discovered that heat could be applied to make food taste better. This was the evolution of cooking. Cooking has not become extinct, now over tens of thousands of years later. Rather than that it has grown into variations and forms that are extremely creative in expression and infinite. According to the latest paleo-archeological information, the oldest art was created by humans during the prehistoric Stone Age, between 300,000 and 700,000 years ago. (Visual Arts) Most anthropologists believe that cooking fires began only about 250,000 years ago. Primatologist Richard Wrangham suggested that cooking was invented as far back as 1. 8 million to 2. 3 million years ago. (The Executives Stulum). Only 50,000 years apart, cooking first, art and cooking were very close in relation. The diversity of location was a major play in why cooking styles, techniques, and even food was different. Due to diverse ecosystems and climates early civilization had to use the resources and technologies that were available locally. The Chinese, as an example, developed wok cooking as an answer to the scarcity of firewood. By cooking over a small hot flame and stirring constantly to prevent burning the food, the use of fuel was maximized. (Art Form). Just how art was forming 50,000 years later due to the location art was also different in parts of the world just like cooking. Food can be considered as an art; for example: the decoration of a food, the way a food is constructed in the plates, or even the way many different foods are being mixed in order to create a new food. Sometimes even people consider the arrangement of plates in a table as an art. This is called Table Art. Brillat-Savarin in his book, â€Å"The physiology of taste† states that cooking is the oldest of all arts. He says that Adam was born hungry and even a new born child first looks for become feed by his nurse right after he comes to new world (Physiology of taste, 300). He also believes that cooking and food is the finest art that has had the most influence on humans’ civilization (300). Food is one of the fewest things in the whole world that almost everyone becomes satisfied with. When people eat, a kind of satisfaction and pleasure makes them happy. But happy is not the only expression connected with food you have happy, disgust, anger, delighted and many more. Everybody is different and just how one dish can make a person happy by it, it can make another person disgusted by it. Everyone would get their very different experience, just how you would look at art and experience a different reaction. Whereas you look at a bright painting and feel intrigued but the person next to you is confused. In art you need your utensils to create a piece of work. The same rule applies in cooking. Yes in cooking you don’t need to use any other instruments to help you cook other than your hands which by the way brings out the artist ability right there. But you can prepare the food to get that extraordinary flavor. A good cook is also a creative one. He or she is not afraid of trying new ways and exploring new methods. He or she has an experimental mind that is coupled with a good sense of taste. The problem is that, because of the experimental nature of the work, the process of creating a masterpiece can get lost in the act of creation. However, the process of creating a culinary masterpiece does not stop there. There must also be a stage of ever refinement to the basic process. For example, should less sugar be added? Should I add more spices? Should I lower the temperature of the heat? These are little adjustments to the process that will turn a recipe from being â€Å"just OK† to â€Å"excellent. †(Art Form) For that, a good cook is not only a creative one. He or she is the master of their masterpiece. The ability to improve upon an old recipe or create an exciting new recipe is a talent a very special few can accomplish with little or no training, but almost anybody with the proper training and a genuine interest in excellent food and its preparation can become an exceptional imaginative chef. Cooking is something that cannot be learnt. In art the qualities of a cook must be ingrained in a person. But that does not mean that you cannot learn a few scrumptious dishes. Works Cited â€Å"art, n. 1†. OED Online. September 2011. Oxford University Press. 12 October 2011 Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme, and M. F. K. Fisher. The Physiology of Taste, Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. New York: Knopf, 2009. Print. â€Å"Cooking history and info†. The Executives Stulum. The Executives Stulum, 09 Oct. 2011. Web. 13 Oct. 2011 â€Å"cooking, n. â€Å". OED Online. September 2011. Oxford University Press. 12 October 2011 â€Å"Earliest Art of Prehistory† Visual-art-corks. com. Encyclopedia of Art. 19 Jan. 2009. Web. 13 Oct. 2011 Murray, Richard â€Å"Cooking As an Art Form. † EzineArticles. com. Ezine Article Group, 12 Feb. 2010. Web. 12 October. 2011.