Culinary and its primary factors - Bipin Chandra Pant (Hospitality advisor)
Cuisine word source is in french language (cuisine = kitchen). The root of the word comes from Latin (coquere = to cook). Its means a characteristic style of cooking. The way food is cooked vary a lot from place to place and is influenced by many factors.
Cooked Food in Ancient Time
The only living being who prepares the food before eating it is human. Since ancient times, human, used to cook the food before consumption. Weather is about meat or vegetables, human cooked the food before eating it. It is well known that the first human beings on earth were hunting for meat. They were using fire to cook it, and using stone hand-made tools they were cutting it in smaller pieces because they realized that if they do so the cooking process is shorter and the taste is different. Since then, human developed the cooking process, inventing all kind of tools, mixing one type of food with another, using all kind of plants to season the food.
Cuisine Evolution
The development of cooking in each country was not the same. There are two major factors that affected the way each pupils developed their cuisine: the position of the country on Earth and religion. Of course there are many more factors that could affect a nation's style of cooking like the neighbours, wars, emigrants, superstitions and many, many, others.
Researching the culinary history of a particular country involves more than identifying traditional foods in current cookbooks. What people eat in all places and through all ages depends upon six primary factors:
Food availability----indigenous animals & plants, imports
Technology---cooking methods & scientific process/progress
Seasons & climate---menus prepared according to ingredient availability; droughts & famines
Religion---customs, rituals, & taboos
Socio-economic class---nobles? merchants? laborers? peasants? slaves?
Politics---foreign influence, immigration patterns, regulations & rationing
