Tag Archive for 'Cooking'

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Study: Meat Preservation and Predator Protection, Rather than Cooking, Were Drivers of Early Fire Use

Jun 4, 2025 by News Staff

The use of fire marks a critical milestone in human evolution, with its initial purposes debated among scholars. While cooking is often cited as the primary...

Wilkin et al. analyzed protein residues from 5,000-year-old copper alloy cauldrons. Image credit: Arnaud 25 / CC BY-SA 4.0.

5,000-Year-Old Cauldrons Shed Light on Diet of Ancient Caucasians

Aug 23, 2023 by News Staff

Archaeologists from the University of Zurich and elsewhere have analyzed protein residues from ancient cooking cauldrons and found that the people of Caucasus...

Strong evidence suggesting that frying in space is possible. Image credit: Lioumbas et al., doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2022.112249.

Is Frying Possible in Space?

Jun 12, 2023 by Natali Anderson

French fries are a very popular food commodity across many cultural backgrounds on Earth and as such they may be appreciated by long-term space travelers....

Neanderthal Diet Included Crab Meat, Archaeologists Say

Feb 7, 2023 by News Staff

Archaeologists have unearthed a rich assemblage of human-accumulated terrestrial and marine faunal remains, including those of several crab species, in...

Dolbunova et al. explored the behavioral mechanisms that led to the emergence of pottery among hunter-gatherer communities in Europe during the mid-Holocene; illustrated here are reconstructions from the (1) Eastern Baltic, (2) Western Baltic, (3) Upper Dnieper, (4) Bug-Dniester, (5) Middle Don, (6) Lower Don, (7) Northern Caspian, (8) Lower Volga, (9) Middle Volga and (10) Upper Volga regions. Image credit: Dolbunova et al., doi: 10.1038/s41562-022-01491-8.

Pottery Vessels Reveal Connections between Prehistoric European Hunter-Gatherer Communities

Dec 22, 2022 by News Staff

Archaeologists have analyzed the remains of 1,226 pottery vessels from 156 hunter-gatherer sites across nine countries in Northern and Eastern Europe....

Ancient inhabitants of the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov site in Israel likely used some kind of earth oven that maintained a temperature below 500 degrees Celsius to cook their fish. Image credit: Ella Maru / Tel Aviv University.

Scientists Find Earliest Evidence of Hominins Cooking with Fire

Nov 15, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have found the 780,000-year-old remains of a cooked carp-like fish at the wetland Acheulean site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel. Ancient...

An ‘Unstan’ type bowl recovered from the lake bed at Loch Arnish. Image credit: Chris Murray.

Archaeologists Detect Cereal-Specific Biomarkers in Neolithic Pottery from Scottish ‘Crannogs’

Sep 7, 2022 by News Staff

Archaeologists have focused on the analysis of preserved lipids from 5,600-5,300-year-old vessels recovered from a group of artificial/semi-artificial...

Hwang et al. studied the capillary-induced coalescence of swelling pasta; they observed that, as pasta is cooked (hence, swollen and softened), capillary action more easily deforms the noodle, and two pasta noodles can coalesce with the shorter stick length: (a) picture of spaghetti aglio e olio; capillary adhesion between the noodles is induced by olive oil seasoned with garlic and pepper; (b) pasta radial and axial growth over time at 100 degrees Celsius cooking due to hygroscopic swelling; radial strain grows up to 70% of its original and axial strain up to 40% of its original after 30 min of cooking (at 100 degrees Celsius); pasta cross section shows color-gradient before it is sufficiently cooked. Image credit: Hwang et al., doi: 10.1063/5.0083696.

New Math Model Describes Swelling, Elasticity and Adhesion of Pasta as It Cooks

Apr 15, 2022 by News Staff

In new research, a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has documented how pasta — composed of starch granules —...

Yin et al. investigated the effects of sous vide, boiling, and roasting on beef protein digestibility and peptide profiling in simulated gastrointestinal digestion. Image credit: Anova Culinary / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sous-Vide Cooking Increases Beef Protein Digestibility, New Study Finds

Dec 10, 2020 by News Staff

Beef samples treated with sous vide — a technique in which food is vacuum-sealed in a plastic pouch and then placed in a water bath or steam environment...

The proximity of hot springs to early settlements have led Sistiaga et al to wonder if early humans used hot springs as a cooking resource long before fire. Image credit: Tom Björklund.

Archaic Humans May Have Boiled Their Food in Hot Springs

Sep 17, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has found evidence that hot springs existed in Olduvai Gorge — a paleoanthropological site in the Great Rift...

Border Cave perched on a cliff in the Lebombo Mountains. Image credit: Ashley Kruger.

Stone Age Humans Roasted Root Vegetables 170,000 Years Ago

Jan 9, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have unearthed 170,000-year-old whole, charred rhizomes of flowering plants from the genus Hypoxis in a cave in southern Africa. These botanical...

The 6,500-year-old pottery fragments from the archaeological site of Real Alto in the Chanduy Valley of Ecuador’s Guayas province. Image credit: Kanomata et al, doi: 10.15184/aqy.2019.56.

6,500-Year-Old Pottery Fragments Found in Ecuador

Jul 26, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Shards of incised ceramic vessels dating back to 4640-4460 BCE have been found at the site of Real Alto on the Ecuadorian coast. The 6,500-year-old pottery...

Exceptionally preserved archaeobotanical remains from the Takarkori rock shelter, Tadrart Acacus, Libya, dating from 7500 to 4200 BC: a - inflorescence of Typha (Late Acacus 3, c. 6800 BC); b - syconium of Ficus sp. (Late Acacus 2, 7500 BC); c - galbulus of Cupressus (Middle Pastoral 2); d - spikelet of Tragus (Middle Pastoral 2, 4200 BC); e - legumes of Cassia (Early Pastoral 1, 6350 BC); f - fruit of Balanites aegyptica (Late Acacus 3, 6800 BC); g - spikelet of Dactyloctenium aegyptium and a detailed image of the grain (Middle Pastoral 2, 4200 BC). Image credit: Julie Dunne et al, doi: 10.1038/nplants.2016.194.

Oldest Evidence for Plant Processing in Pottery Found

Dec 21, 2016 by News Staff

An international team of archaeologists has discovered the earliest evidence of humans processing plants for food found anywhere in the world. The findings...

According to Karen Hardy et al, earliest Europeans did not use fire. Image credit: Charles Robert Knight.

Earliest Europeans Did Not Use Fire for Cooking, Researchers Say

Dec 14, 2016 by News Staff

Europe’s earliest humans did not use fire, but had a balanced diet of meat and plants — all eaten raw, according to a team of researchers led by...

Chimpanzees at Miami Metrozoo. Image credit: Matthew Hoelscher / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Chimpanzees Possess Cognitive Skills Needed to Cook, Study Suggests

Jun 3, 2015 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, humans’ cognitive capacity for cooking is shared by chimpanzees (Pan sp.)....

An Incipient Jomon pot from Kubodera-minami, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, about 15,000 years old (Tokamchi City Museum)

Study Finds Earliest Evidence Yet of Pottery Used for Cooking

Apr 11, 2013 by Enrico de Lazaro

According to a pioneering study detailed in the journal Nature, hunter-gatherers were using pots for cooking fish as early as 15,000 years ago. Left: a...

1.9 Million Years of Cooking

Aug 23, 2011 by James Freeman

Harvard researchers have found that practice of processing food through cooking was likely invented by human’s early ancestors more than 1.9 million...