The 25 Most Important Inventions In Food And Drink

Chef"I simply couldn't cook without my…" Cast-iron frying pan? Ginsu knives? Immersion blender? Mickey Mouse Waffle Maker?

Everybody who prepares food at home (or professionally, for that matter) has an implement or appliance or five or ten of them that they consider essential to their culinary practices. But how many of these things really matter in the larger scheme of things? How many are truly essential, or at least very important, to the preparation — and the ultimate consumption — of food (and let's throw drink in here as well, just to wash it all down with)?

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We were sitting around talking about this one day and came up with the obvious candidates: pots and pans, the knife, the oven, the (hey, we're up-to-date around here) food processor… Then somebody said, well, what about the things nobody invented but somebody figured out or harnessed — like, er, fire, without which cooking as we understand it would never have been born? And what about methods of collecting food, means of storing or preserving it, ways of  taming it? We started making a list, including not just things we have in our own kitchens (salt, four-sided grater) but also natural phenomena (fermentation) and specialized tools (sous-vide equipment — which we don't have in our own kitchens yet).

We decided to leave out foodstuffs — miraculous innovations that became veritable building blocks of civilization, like bread, wine, cheese, vinegar, bacon-cheeseburgers — though we did include two substances that we ingest, salt and gelling agents. We left out all the vehicles and devices with which food is planted and harvested (with one exception; see below); we omitted broad concepts like the domestication of animals and the development of genetic studies, though both have obviously had enormous effect on what and how we eat (among other things); we decided not to include means of conveying information about food, from the book to the iPad.

What we ended up with is a list of things that we, yes, simply couldn't cook — or eat and/or drink — without. As usual with such compendiums, we have been both selective and subjective. We've probably missed some obvious and vital items, and we have frankly allowed ourselves to have a little fun here and there. Should you decide to assemble such a list yourself, of course, it would almost certainly not be the same as ours. We'd love to hear your nominations for things we should have included (use the "Add a Comment" box below). But first, take a look at what we consider to be The 50 Most Important Inventions (and Discoveries) in Food and Drink in the list below. 

This post originally appeared at The Daily Meal.

#25 Pasteurization

The idea of heating food, whether solid or liquid, to inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria, goes back hundreds of years, and may well have been first figured out in Japan or China. Controlled heat-treatment, designed not to kill all living things food might contain but to limit the number of potentially problematic microorganisms, was developed by the French chemist Louis Pasteur and his physiologist colleague Claude Bernard as a means of stabilizing wine. It came to be commonly used to treat not just wine and beer but dairy products, canned foods, and even bottled water.

#24 The Gas Oven

Wood-fueled ovens date far back into prehistory, and though designs improved dramatically over the centuries, they were still the only cooking option, even indoors, in many parts of the world — where there were no gas lines — through the mid-1900s. The earliest known use of the gas oven, however, was at a dinner party hosted by Moravian chemist Zachaus Winzler in 1802. In 1834, British inventor James Sharp began selling the first commercial gas ovens, and by the 1920s, appliances outfitted with thermostats and coated in enamel for easier cleaning were common.

#23 The Grater

Knives cut, but to render firm foodstuffs (cheese, lemon peel, raw vegetables, etc.) into shreds or powders, a grater is the thing. The first one, made of pewter and designed to turn rock-hard cheese into something edible, was invented in France in the 1540s by one François Boullier. Many variations have ensued, among them the four-sided love-it-or-hate-it box grater and the newly trendy Microplane. The latter, based on the carpenter's rasp, was invented in the 1990s by Arkansas toolmaker Richard Grace.

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