The concept of cooking skills: A review with contributions to the scientific debate

JOMORI, Manuela Mika; VASCONCELOS, Francisco de Assis Guedes de; BERNARDO, Greyce Luci; UGGIONI, Paula Lazzarin; PROENÇA, Rossana Pacheco da Costa

doi:10.1590/1678-98652018000100010

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REVIEW • Rev Nutr 31 (1) • Jan-Feb 2018 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-98652018000100010 linkcopy

The concept of cooking skills: A review with contributions to the scientific debate

O conceito de habilidades culinárias. uma revisão com contribuições ao debate científico

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This paper aimed to conduct a literature review about the concept of cooking skills to contribute to the scientific debate about the subject. A systematic search was performed in the Scopus, PubMed/MedLine and Web of Science databases as well as the periodicals of the Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education in Brazil Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior website, using the following Portuguese and English keywords: cooking skills, cooking and food/meal preparation. We also consulted references cited by these papers, electronic dictionaries (in Portuguese, English and French), technical documents found on public and private institutional websites, as well as books. Basic, etymological/vernacular and systematic definitions for cooking were identified, including historical global and national contexts. To conceptualize cooking skills, categories related to food and individuals were established, purposing a conceptual model. The category related to food referred to the use of unprocessed/minimal processed foods (which require procedures prior to their preparation), and/or processed/ultra-processed foods (which need a little or no preparation, such as re-heating). The category related to individuals involved dimensions such as confidence, attitudes, behavior, and individual knowledge used to prepare foods. The historical definitions of cooking allowed us to clarify the concept of cooking skills. Considering the global context of valuing and recovering cooking for the promotion of healthy eating, this review can contribute to the scientific discussion about the concept of cooking skills. The purposed conceptual model enables parameters to be established for further investigations, allowing cooking interventions to be directed toward promoting healthy eating.

Keywords
Cooking; Convenience foods; Dietetics; Food handling; Meals

Antiquity	Hippocrate’ diet principles. Aim: to make the food digestible [²⁵].
13th century	Transition from dietary to gastronomical principles. Valuing flavor and gluttony - France [²⁵].
17th century	Valuing high gastronomy and culinary art - France [²⁵].
1926-1930	Inventory of food practises such as authentic, national and traditional cooking legacy, as well as black, indigenous, and Portuguese miscegenation - Brazila [²⁶-³¹].
1930-1940	Diffusion of culinary, dietary kitchen, and dietary technique concepts by nutrologist - Brazil [³²,³³,³⁴,⁴¹].
1963	Consolidation of the dietary technique in Nutrition courses - Brazilb [⁴³].
1967-1978	Discussion on transformation of raw (food) into cooked (cultural) - France/ United Kingdomc [⁴⁴].
1970-2000	New alimentary/dietary models in the field of Food and Nutrition - Brazil [³²,³³,⁴⁵].
1990-2000	Removal of cooking classes from formal school curricula - United Kingdom/Canada/New Zealand/Brazil [¹,⁶,⁹,¹⁰,¹⁴,¹⁵,⁴²,⁴⁶].
1993-2014	Diffusion of cooking in TV shows, recipe books and the internet, as well as visibility of chefs United Kingdom/ USA/Brazil [¹,¹⁵,⁴⁷-⁵⁴].
1995-2016	Bringing back cooking as an element of fostering healthy eating - United Kingdom/USA/Brazil [¹,³,⁴,⁵,⁷,⁹,¹⁰,¹²,²⁴,⁵⁵-⁵⁸].

Sources	Cooking (to cook)	Culinary or cooking (cookery)
Basic Definitions*
MacQuarie Dictionary (2008)a	‘To prepare (food) by the action of heating’
Aurélio Online Dictionary (2014)b	‘Conversion of raw material for the food cooked with heating’.	‘Art of preparing foods’.
MacMillan Dictionary online (2014)c	‘Art and science of food preparation for the table, generally by heating until its flavour, consistency, appearance and chemical composition are changed’.	‘The process of preparing the food to make it ready for consumption’.
Oxford Dictionary online (2014)d	‘The practice or skill of preparing food by combining, mixing, and heating ingredients’.	‘Food that has been prepared in a particular way’.
Dictionnaire des cultures alimentaires (2012) [⁶¹]	Cuisine (historical): ‘The kitchen defines territories, it becomes the art of producing food, in a technical sense, which is the very way human beings make good food’. ‘Thus, it enables knowledge transmission’.
Etymological or Vernacular Definitions*
Diez-Garcia (1995) [⁵⁵]	Cooking: It originates from the Latin word culinarius, derived from the Latin word culina (kitchen), related to the art of cooking. In a strict sense, it originates from a place to prepare food (kitchen). It is considered as a ‘set of practises involving the handling of foods for alimentary purposes’, consisting of the application of any technique to modify them from how they are obtained, such as a mixture and from a variety of foods.
Mintz (1996) [⁵⁴]	Cuisine: In French language** means not only kitchen (kitchen as a physical, domestic space in the English language), but also cooking, which is originated in the Latin verb coquere (to cook), which also originated cocina (Spanish), cucina (Italian), küche (German), and kitchen (English). It may also designate the so-called high gastronomy.
Systematic Definitions*
Lévi-Strauss [1964] (2010)e [⁴⁴]	Cooking: Range of culturally accepted procedures used to transform the nature (raw) in culture (cooked), i.e., how raw food become cooked through a process of cultural transformation.
Brillat-Savarin (1995) [⁶²]	Cooking: ‘Is the most ancient of the arts’, above all, ‘the one that provided us the most important service to civil life’.
Flandrin (1998) [²⁵]	Cuisine: Related to the emergence of valuing flavour and gluttony over food, which historically, in Europe, was influenced by dietary and therapeutic functions, legitimising itself in the French context of the end of the 17th century and early 18th century; the taste or ‘good taste’ in cooking practise. Culinary is featured in dictionaries of that time from terms such as cooking and spices with a dietary, gastronomic focus.
Fischler (2001) [⁶³]	Anthropological function of culinary: The culinary framework occurs in three peculiarities to explain its anthropological function: 1) the omnivorous paradox***, 2) the incorporation principle (which considers edible), and 3) its borders and the nature of taste (the physiological function of taste and its meanings and cognitive ideals).
Barham (2002) [⁴⁸]	Cooking: Transforms indigestible food into edible food, increasing its options (for example, by means of cooking).
Symons (2002) [⁶⁴]	Cooking: It is more than the application of heat to food, verified in the definitions of dictionaries; it is also making them ready for use (such as the preparation of a salad, for example). It is based on approaches ranging from issues of taste (hedonism versus belief/religion) and nutrition (improving digestibility and food security); the modern approaches (involving cooking as a symbol); and materialistic ones (female domestic task supported by the male public work, considering the beginning of production chain influenced by domination and economic policy).
Poulain & Proença (2004) [⁶⁵]	‘The expression manger la cuisine, even among the French may generate different interpretations, such as cuisine (or eating), in terms of: cooking (familiar, refined, etc.), products (natural, organic, etc.), culture and identity (traditional, regional, etc.), time or economic constraints (quick, cheap, etc.), and in nutritional terms (balanced, fat-free food, etc.)’, as highlighted in Poulain (1998) [⁶⁶]
Systematic Definitions*
Ornellas (1963) [⁴³]	Art of cooking: ‘Aims to modify food, making it tastier and easier to digest’. Cooking: A method that improves the nutritional, sensory and digestive food properties, part of the food preparation stage (mixing and/or cooking and finishing) until its distribution for consumption.

Classifications of food
International literature [¹,⁴,⁶-¹⁰,¹⁵]	*Brazilian recommendation	Generations [⁶⁷]	Pre-preparation**	Preparation**
Food/basic ingredients	UN or MP Food. CI may be included.	First-generation foodstuffs. Raw vegetables (fourth generation) and meat foodstuffs (fifth generation) may be MP.	Mandatory procedures of cleaning, subdivision and union. Cooking from the beginning (cooking from scratch). Optional use of CI. Knife skills.	Optional procedures (after implementation of pre-preparation techniques) of cooking in water, without water, and mixed cooking technique. Preparation of raw salads consist of pre-preparation itself. Optional use of CI.
Convenience foods/ ready for consumption	P or UP food Some MP foods (such as milk and oats, for example).	Second to fifth-generation foodstuffs.	Procedures of union: hydrating and mixing (for some UP food, e.g., powder products such as powdered milk and chocolate milk).	Optional procedures (with no need for pre-preparation) of cooking in water, without water, and mixed cooking technique. Heating (using a microwave oven). Use of CI for some techniques (such as use of oil for frying, for example).

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[1] Note:

[TFN01] ^a
First edition of “The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization”, published in 1933; first edition of “The Mansions and the Shanties: The Making of Modern Brazil”, published in 1936; and “Sugar”, published in 1939;

[TFN02] ^b
First edition entitled “Dietary technique: Science and art in the kitchen” (“Técnica dietética: ciência arte na cozinha”), which was revised, expanded and published after the fourth edition as “Dietary technique: selecting and preparing food” (“Técnica dietética: seleção e preparo dos alimentos”) [⁴³].

[TFN13] ^c
First edition of “The Raw and the Cooked”, published in Brazil in 1964.