Harold McGee's books are indispensable to anyone interested in the science of cooking:

McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York: Scribner, 2004.

---. The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990. See especially chapter 17: "From Raw to Cooked: The Transformation of Flavor," a brilliant speculation on why humans like the taste of cooked food.

---. Keys to Good Cooking. New York: Penguin Press, 2010.

On Fire, Fire Cookery, and Sacrifice in History and Mythology

Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. See Alter's notes to Leviticus for discussion of sacrifice in the Old Testament and the kosher laws.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoa.n.a.lysis of Fire. Boston: Beacon, 1964.

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Annette Lavers, tr. New York: Hill and w.a.n.g, 1972. See the essay "Steak and Chips."

Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. The Physiology of Taste. New York: Everyman's Library, 2009.

Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre Vernant. The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989.

Douglas, Mary. "Deciphering a Meal," accessed online: http://etnologija.etnoinfolab.org/dok.u.menti/82/2/2009/douglas_1520.pdf.

Freedman, Paul, ed. Food: The History of Taste. Berkeley: University of California, 2007. See especially the chapter on ancient Greece and Rome by Veronika Grimm.

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton, 1962. See his "conjecture" on the control of fire in the note on pp. 4243.

Goudsblom, Johan. Fire and Civilization. London: Allen Lane, 1992.

Harris, Marvin. The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig: Riddles of Food and Culture. New York: Touchstone, 1985.

Ka.s.s, Leon. The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. New York: Free Press, 1994. See especially his accounts of sacrifice, cannibalism, and the kosher laws.

Lamb, Charles. A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig & Other Essays. London: Penguin Books, 2011. Also available on-line at: http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia1/pig.htm.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Origins of Table Manners. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. See especially the chapter "A Short Treatise on Culinary Anthropology."

Lieber, David L. Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. New York: The Rabbinical a.s.sembly/United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 2001. See the essay on sacrifice in the Old Testament, by Gordon Tucker.

Montanari, Ma.s.simo. Food Is Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Plato. The Phaedrus, Lysis and Protagoras of Plato: A New and Literal Translation by J. Wright. London: Macmillan, 1900.

Pyne, Stephen J. Fire: A Brief History. Seattle: University of Washington, 2001.

Raggio, Olga. "The Myth of Prometheus: Its Survival and Metamorphoses up to the Eighteenth Century." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Inst.i.tutes, Vol. 21, No. 1/2 (JanuaryJune, 1958).

Segal, Charles. "The Raw and the Cooked in Greek Literature: Structure, Values, Metaphor." Cla.s.sical Journal (AprilMay, 1974): 289308.

PART II: WATEROn the History and Significance of Cooking with Pots

Allport, Susan. The Primal Feast: Food, s.e.x, Foraging, and Love. New York: Harmony, 2000.

Atalay, Sonya. "Domesticating Clay: The Role of Clay b.a.l.l.s, Mini b.a.l.l.s and Geometric Objects in Daily Life at catalhoyuk" in Ian Holder, ed., Changing Materialities at catalhoyuk. Cambridge: McDonald Inst.i.tute for Archaeological Research, 2005.

---, and Christine A. Hastorf. "Food, Meals, and Daily Activities: Food Habitus at Neolithic catalhoyuk." American Antiquity, Vol. 71, No. 2 (April 2006): 283319. Published by the Society for American Archaeology.

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. New York: Free Press, 2002.

Haaland, Randi. "Porridge and Pot, Bread and Oven: Food Ways and Symbolism in Africa and the Near East from the Neolithic to the Present." Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17, 2: 16582.

Jones, Martin. Feast: Why Humans Share Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Kaufmann, Jean-Claude. The Meaning of Cooking. Cambridge: Polity, 2010.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Origin of Table Manners. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. The discussion of boiling versus roasting is in the chapter "A Short Treatise on Culinary Anthropology."

Rumohr, C. Fr. v., and Barbara Yeomans. The Essence of Cookery (Geist Der Kochkunst). London: Prospect, 1993.

Sutton, David, and Michael Hernandez. "Voices in the Kitchen: Cooking Tools as Inalienable Possessions." Oral History, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Autumn 207): 6776.

Symons, Michael. A History of Cooks and Cooking. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2000.

Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1973.

Welfeld, Irving. "You Shall Not Boil a Kid in Its Mother's Milk: Beyond Exodus 23:19." Jewish Bible Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2004.

On Cooking, Gender, and the Time Crunch

Clark, Anna. "The Foodie Indictment of Feminism" on Salon, May 26, 2010. http://www.salon.com/2010/05/26/foodies_and_feminism/.

Cognard-Black, Jennifer. "The Feminist Food Revolution." Ms. Magazine, Summer 2010, Vol. xx, No. 3.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second s.e.x. New York: Vintage, 2011.

Flammang, Janet A. The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2009.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. W. Norton, 1963.

Gussow, Joan Dye. "Why Cook?" Journal of Gastronomy 7 (1), Winter/Spring, 1993, 7988.

---. "Women, Food and Power Revisited." A speech to the South Carolina Nutrition Council, February, 26, 1993.

Hayes, Shannon. Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. Richmondville, NY: Left to Write Press, 2010.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home & Home Becomes Work. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997.