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Cookery originated sometime between the onset of fire making and the beginning, eons later, of the Neolithic period. Until they learned to make and control fire, early humans ate their food raw, subsisting mostly on wild fruits, nuts, insects, fish, and game. Before the development of pottery vessels some 7,000 to 12,000 years ago, food was cooked by roasting it over or toasting it beside open fires, or by wrapping it in leaves or husks, to be pit-steamed over embers. The development of pottery made possible such relatively sophisticated cooking methods as boiling, stewing, braising, frying, and, perhaps, a primitive form of baking. These techniques, in combination with the domestication of animals for their meat and milk and the cultivation of edible plants, opened the way to what ultimately became modern cookery.
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