Consider the Fork Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Back to the Future in the Kitchen and our BookBrowse Review of Consider the Fork.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Bee Wilson covers a wide range of culinary tools in Consider the Fork, but obviously she could not include everything. Are there any tools that you wish had been included in this book, but weren't? More generally, what tools continue to be underappreciated or underused—and do these share any characteristics with the ones that Wilson does discuss in the book?
2. Put together a list of must-have kitchen tools. Where do you draw the line between essential utilities that no cook can operate without, and frivolous accessories that just clutter up the kitchen?
3. In the chapter "Grind," Wilson writes that the Cuisinart "trans - form[ed] cooking from pain to pleasure"—and yet she confesses to still using "obsolete" or needlessly labor-intensive technologies, such as when she grinds basil and garlic with a mortar and pestle to make pesto. Do you ever choose to make food in an old-fashioned way, even when more advanced tools are available? If so, why?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Basic Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.