Why We Cooked: Food Preference, Accidental Discovery, and What the Evidence Cannot Yet Explain

Cooking is usually explained by what it gave hominins: more usable energy, smaller guts, and room for larger brains. Why hominins cooked at all receives less attention. This paper reviews the evidence in two parts: why hominins cooked once they had fire, and why cooked food was preferred. Captive apes prefer cooked food, which suggests the preference was in place before fire was controlled, and chimpanzees will wait for and plan around cooking; together these make deliberate repetition of an accidental discovery plausible. The ape experiments that varied texture did not decide between flavor and softness. The paper sets out an experiment that varies flavor, aroma, and texture independently, and states what data a test of the link between cooked diets and brain size would need.

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