Originally published on EverydayeBook.com

Any anthropology groupie (guilty) will be absolutely thrilled by Michael Pollan’s newest food adventure, Cooked. The book is supposedly about Pollan’s attempts to master four different recipes, each using one of the four elements: whole hog barbecue (fire), Bolognese sauce (water), sourdough bread (air), and pickles, cheese, and beer (fermentation, or the earth). Within the first few pages, however, the reader will realize that Pollan is attempting much more than a quirky method of recipe organization.

By examining different cooking techniques through natural elements, Pollan attempts to dissect the very impact of cooking on human civilization – namely by answering the question: Is cooking what transformed us from nature to culture? From “savage” to civilized? Many anthropologists have examined these questions thoroughly, but by bringing in different elements, Pollan goes a step further, showing that the different elements provide different facets of the nature-culture transformation. Fire, for example, is, to this day, a “man’s” cooking element. Think of the stereotypical dad manning the grill during summer cookouts. Water, on the other hand, which lends itself to stews, soups, and other slow cooking items, tends to be a more feminine cooking technique, concentrated around the kitchen and, historically, requiring women’s dedication in that space. In Pollan’s earth chapter, which focuses on the fermentation of pickles, beer, and cheese, the author ties our consumption of these foods back to concepts of mortality.

For all of these philosophical and anthropological underpinnings, however, Cooked is not a scholarly study. Each chapter follows Pollan’s fumbles and successes in the kitchen with his four recipes, weaving his larger questions into a fun and mouth-watering narrative that includes a host of attention-grabbing side characters, like a California nun dedicated to cheese, or a larger-than-life barbecue pitmaster with a taste for celebrity. It’s fun to watch Pollan attempt the recipes, and you share his excitement when he perfects a whole-wheat loaf, or a bottle of “Pollan’s Pale Ale.” For those bold enough to attempt the recipes themselves (most of which are pretty involved), Pollan provides an appendix with instructions and encouragement.

More than anything, reading Cooked is a great reminder of the huge importance of food in our lives, communities, culture, and species. Even if you aren’t galvanized to make your own sourdough bread (which takes three weeks), Cooked will give you a new appreciation of the everyday foods we eat, and just how much they connect us all.