In many cultures around the world, from the Iroquois of North America to the Scandinavian Vikings, the longhouse was the model standard of living.

As early as Antiquity we find areas of dwellings that resemble our modern kitchen, with examples of fire pits and communal food preparation areas predating even this. In the Roman Empire, common folk who lived in cities had no means of a kitchen in their homes but instead used large public kitchens. Individuals brought their own pots and pan and shared the fire to cook with. The wealthy of the time owned private kitchens in their homes that were ran by servants and slaves. These kitchens often had open fires, no chimneys, and were closed off from the rest of the house due to sociological reasons (not mixing with slaves).

In many cultures around the world, from the Iroquois of North America to the Scandinavian Vikings, the longhouse was the model standard of living. These communal dwellings, designed to be both efficient with space and resources, housed extended families that all lived and worked together. Often, a kitchen area was found in the form of a fire pit beneath the highest point of the building where a hole acted as a chimney. Cooking and food preparation was considered a social task and in examples of larger dwellings, up to three kitchens could be built into a single home, each specialising in the cooking of a different type of food preparation. For Scandinavian families, the space they occupied in their homes were particularly versatile, as the fire was the main source of heat and light, it is believed that collapsible tables were erected for meals and gatherings, before being packed away again and stored to clear the space for other activities.

Throughout the European late Middle Ages, kitchens were commonly moved into their own rooms, removing the smoke problem in living spaces but also the benefit of their heating. To counter this, cocklestoves were used in living rooms, operated from the kitchen, which acted as a source of smoke-free heat. This divide between the functional kitchen and social space freed the living room to become a dedicated area for social gathering and hosting functions. In the homes of the wealthy, it became a symbol of status to move your servants who worked the kitchen away from where you, your family, and your guests were. But in poorer houses, the kitchen and living space remained one room called a Smoke Kitchen, and continued to be common practice until the middle of the 20th century. It is thought that these Smoke Kitchens allowed the smoke to move freely through a hood above the fireplace that was used to smoke meats, heat the property, and protect the woodwork from vermin.

Technological advances during the Industrial Revolution brought major changes to the kitchen. The first examples of an enclosed fire in the form of an iron stove was developed around 1740. These stoves were a great success thanks to their heat efficiency and control of smoke, but remained wood and coal fired for many years after gas power was invented. In 1825, the first gas stove was patented in the U.S. and quickly became commonplace in urban areas. Kitchen cabinets soon followed, eliminating storage issues in newly designed houses that lacked a pantry and larder. By the second half of the 19th century, urbanization of cities meant that planning had to be put in place to build water distribution pipes into homes. For the first time, houses had running water pumped directly into them and waste water taken away. At the same time, gas pipes were laid, originally for lighting, but became available for heating and cooking soon after. At the turn of the 20th century electricity had become a viable alternative to gas and slowly came to replace gas lighting, heating and stoves. Despite the invention of the first electric stove in 1893, it was not until the 1930s that the technology began to take off.

During the industrialisation, society saw many changes come to the kitchen. The newly formed working class were housed as whole families who lived in small one or two room apartments in tenement buildings up to six stories high. These rooms acted as kitchen spaces, living areas, bedrooms and even bathrooms all in one room. Sometimes, apartments were shared with “night-sleepers”, unmarried men who paid for a bed at night. With no running water, most had to fetch their water from nearby wells and heat it on the stove. At the end of the 19th century water pipes were laid, but often only for one tap per building or story. All that separated parts of the room from the rest were curtains that could be moved back and forth depending on the needed use. The upper class kitchens remained much the same as they had for the previous century, still hidden away in the basement and operated by servants.

In the following decades, the urban middle class imitated the luxurious dining styles of the upper class, but in much smaller apartments. This meant that their kitchen was also the main room, being where the family lived. Because of this, these middle class kitchens were often more homely and relaxed environments designed to be enjoyed, as opposed to the upper class working kitchens occupied by servants.

At the turn of the 20th century, a trend towards “process optimization” meant that kitchens were redesigned, in one instance by Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky to reflect the efficiency of the workspace. Social housing projects developed kitchens that measured 1.9m – 3.4m, designed to be worked by just the woman of a family. 10,000 apartments were recorded to be built in such a way in a single housing project in Frankfurt in the 1930s. Criticized for “exiling the women in the kitchen”, post-World War 2 economy meant that a lot of these kitchens were seen as the only option for new builds and so once again, the kitchen as a work space separated from the living areas prevailed. A functional argument for keeping the living and cooking space separate was to protect belongings from the dampness caused by steam. It was around this time that the first refrigerators started to appear in kitchens too, soon followed by microwave ovens in 1946.

In the 1980s the revolutionary invention of the extractor hood allowed for the trend of open plan kitchens to take hold. Integrating the kitchen and living space, and in some cases the entire ground floor of a house or apartment into a single space for food and social gatherings to once again play an important and intertwined role in our societies. This re-integration of the cooking space coincided with a re-imagining and perceptual shift in how cooking was seen by society at the time. Increasingly it had become less work and more an act of creativity and socializing. The enhanced status of cooking meant that kitchens became a show of status. Capitalizing on this, designers began making kitchens that would become known as Trophy Kitchens, designed to impress and project social status rather than functional use and actual cooking.

Food and its preparation and consumption thereof, has always played a vital role in our social aspects of life. This is important to remember in light of the growing challenges we face and possible solutions that present themselves.

17% of all food served to customers in a modern setting goes to waste.

Modern professional kitchens were born thanks to a man called Georges Auguste Escoffier. A French chef with a military background, he was the first to define the roles of the modern kitchen during his career cooking for French royalty. Before him, cooks all worked together as a team, serving each course and customer with the versatility and teamwork of each and every member of the kitchen. Escoffier was the one who broke the jobs up into stations. Mirroring the models devised in manufacturing at the time, thanks largely to Henry Ford’s observations in a slaughterhouse, Escoffier had dishes move between specialised chefs, each contributing a little piece to the overall meal. Thanks to him, every modern kitchen around the world has a boucher (butcher chef), a poissonnier (fish chef), rotisseur (roast chef), friturier (frying chef), grillardin (grill chef), garde manger (pantry chef), pattisier (pastry chef), entremetier (vegetable chef) etc. To begin with, this notion of a kitchen didn’t catch on, as most people ate at home and cooked for a large family. But as more and more people came to earn a better income, the idea of fine dining and eating in a style developed for royalty began to gain traction. Professional kitchens played a highly important role, becoming the platform to host all gatherings. Birthdays, weddings, business meetings, funerals, social gatherings of every type, all to the backdrop of a restaurant, pub, hotel or catering company. This model became so influential that the French idea of fine dining took over the developing world. As far as Asia, one could find Asian street food, but until a recent shift in the last few years, if you stepped foot in a fine dining establishment, it was all French. But there are problems with this model, namely waste.

17% of all food served to customers in a modern setting goes to waste and portion sizes have increased by roughly 8 times. This percentage goes up when you consider all the produce that gets rejected for its imperfections. This is where our second big change comes into play. We need to stop expecting to be treated as royalty when we frequent a restaurant. The fine dining performance is a well practiced piece of theatre, one that has trickled down to every aspect of our dining experience. Front of house staff are expected to act as though serving the Queen herself and customers feel perfectly comfortable making any and all requests for the chef to cater to their every desire and whim. So extensive is this culture that it can be found in fast food stores as commonly as high end restaurants.

This modern view of dining has also paved the way for the chef as the celebrity. The rise of chefs like Marco Pierre White, who, at a time when fine dining was all about the diner, took hold of the pompousness and demanded to be heard. He forced the world of diners and critics to acknowledge his skill and craft, but in doing so elevated the ego of the performance to another level. But there were positives to this shift too. The chef became seen as the artist. Their role grew into a discoverer of innovation, preserver of heritage, and a bridge between society and those that grow and innovate in our food supply.

Change needs to come in our rediscovery of shared food.

Around the same time, Michelin, which was originally a guide for long distance truck drivers to know where they could find good grub, also helped cultivate our modern view of food excellence, awarding those who put on the best show with a symbol of status that allowed them to both gain acknowledgement for their achievements but also hike up their prices, raising once again the customers expectations in the world of fine dining theatrics. What affects one area of the food sector also affects the others, and so customers across the entire sector grew more and more comfortable with the notion that it was their right to be offended if a server denied them their request, or perhaps didn’t serve them in a manner that befits the false standard they had come to expect. I have witnessed customers become irritable and rude if a server forgets that they asked for an extra sugar in their coffee. What is this monster we’ve created that a fully grown adult feels justified in speaking to another with so little respect over something so trivial and easily fixed?

As the number of those with disposable income increases, it has become ever more important that we shift our expectations towards eating out. We need to appreciate what we’re given instead of feeling entitled to it. If we place greater value on what we buy and more appreciation for those who prepare our food, then we won’t be so inclined to waste it. Why can’t we measure the success of a restaurant by its innovation in limiting food waste? As previously mentioned, the Michelin Guide have made steps towards this with their newly awarded green star system, but I don’t think this goes far enough. Sure, it’s lovely to know which food establishments are putting in the effort to be sustainable, but why not make this a standard that every restaurant is measured against? It is fully possible for all food businesses to embrace these practices into their way of life, but they choose not to because they don’t have an incentive. If sustainable food practice is a criteria for normal Michelin star awards, and crucially, businesses could risk losing a star should they not consider sustainable practices, then I think the leaders of the industry would quickly implement changes that favour resolution to the planetary problems we face.

In the home kitchen it is a different story. We are caught between the effort it takes to plan, source and cook a meal (sometimes for a our whole family, sometimes just for us), making that meal balanced, tasty and nutritious, and trying to make the best decisions for ourselves, our busy lives, and our planet. As we can see from the history of kitchen design, in the past our ancestors lived together as an extended family unit, often living under one roof, and dividing the work between many. It is a much more efficient model to work in bulk, allowing one person to cook for many whilst the many attend to other activities. In cooking, it is the act of applying heat to an ingredient that takes the longest amount of time. One potato in a pan of hot water takes just as long to cook as one hundred potatoes. But with the widely accepted system of the Nuclear Family still hanging over us, we often have one person cooking for just a few others. We are each kept separate in our own little containers, each with our own little kitchens, each spending X amount of time cooking something from scratch to feed a small number of others. Fit this design into the modern work schedule and you quickly understand why so many turn to ready meals and take away food. Food, prepared at the heart of our families and societies, a practice in health, sharing and bonds, has become a necessity we palm off onto others whilst the traditions, knowledge and recipes of our heritage are lost within only a generation. There are, of course, some ethical companies that are attempting to offer healthy food packs and ready meals, sourced directly from sustainable producers and delivered to your door. This, perhaps, is one solution whilst we continue to live and work in this unbalance. However, it is vital that we continue to invest time and effort into food practices and value what we have. With great shifts coming in how our food is grown, we must learn to reflect these changes in our homes and kitchens. One key change is to cook for others. Why do we see going out to a restaurant as the modern celebration of food and socializing? Why does it seem more socially acceptable to have a BBQ outside and invite everyone we know but not invite them into our kitchens to bring food round, join forces, and share what we have?

There are two big changes that are coming to how we treat food, driven by a very real need for sustainability. We have already covered the change needed in our outdated Escoffier view of eating out and royal treatment, in favour of appreciation and value; the start in treating food as the most important factor of the food industry. We need to cultivate a distain for food waste. Nurture an outlook that finds it insulting to all those who are involved in its growth and preparation, as well as the lives involved in its growth and those less fortunate who cannot afford to be wasteful.

The second change needs to come in our rediscovery of shared food. During the time of writing this, Covid has taken hold and the idea of shared food and shared food spaces seems a distant fantasy, but should we not get behind this idea then we could be faced with a much greater issue than Covid, the climate crisis. We need to learn to reach out to our friends and families and make opportunities to cook for one another and share. Just once a month can make a huge difference. And sharing what we have spare amongst those we know and trust will limit a lot of perfectly edible food that would otherwise go to waste.

But what about the actual physical and technological changes that are coming to our beloved kitchens during this revolution? Most notably, the lack of fire. Most of us are familiar with an electric oven and hobs, but the next step in the industry is towards induction surfaces. Remember, this is the age of magnatism. Induction hobs use magnetic fields to heat an entire pan, cooking food evenly and efficiently. Imagine one large counter top in your kitchen that you can place pans on wherever you like and control what temperature you hold each one of them at and for how long. Next are our fridges. Some believe that a similar technology to induction hobs will be able to chill specially designed food storage containers, removing any need of a dedicated fridge at all. Get home, unpack your shopping into your storage containers, and place them on the induction shelving in your kitchen which will cool the contents of the container to whatever you set it. But there are some who are working to design ever more efficient refrigerators that can detect stock levels of ingredients, control different temperatures on different shelves, and even place an order online for your next delivery when they know you’re running low. We’ve come a long way from root cellars. The last big change that could come to our kitchens is more cosmetic. The introduction of porcelain as a counter top. This ceramic material can’t be scratched, burnt or stained, is easily kept clean, and could become commonplace in our kitchens of the future.

I believe that through the development of technological revolution, outdated modes are liberated to become expressions of art. Much like how the invention of the camera freed painting to become something wonderful, expressive, exploring and abstract, I believe that modern kitchens won’t see the end of cooking with a naked flame. Think, how many of us own a perfectly functional oven, yet choose to have a BBQ with friends and family? Imagine a future where the safety and efficiency of a kitchen means that we can cook for those we love with ease, sharing our food and building our social bonds like our ancestors did, in an environment that excels at providing valued and nutritious food that we ourselves have the time and care not to waste. This may seem like a lot to take on right now, but changes are made best one step at a time. Think about which ingredient you use the most in your cooking, then find a means to source it from an sustainable producer. From pasta to rice to tea bags to olive oil. Whatever it is, making this one change makes a big difference. Next, reach out to your friends and family and ask if they’d like to come round once a month for a meal. As lovely as it would be to cook for those who already appreciate food, I suggest you target a friend or group of friends who you think make poor food decisions. This way, through action instead of preaching, you can expose them to new ideas. The focus won’t be on the amazing execution of your culinary skills but rather the act of sharing. Remember, nobody responds well to those who aim to educate but everybody can enjoy a good meal.

These two changes can lead us in the right direction for a future where our kitchens are once again the rightful heart of our communities. And sharing ideas like these could make a big difference to our lives as well as the lives of our children.

We know things have to change, but we’re comfortable to live in disillusion. We see adverts telling us that change is coming, innovation will save us, technology is the future, but not many are willing to take steps towards this future for themselves. We tell ourselves that we did well buying organic asparagus when it was in fact flown in from the US. We lie to ourselves that it’s okay to throw food away because our portioning is out of control. But even composting is a waste when you consider the long and extensive process that food has gone through to find its way onto your plate. Simple changes are all it takes. A shift in outlook, a questioning of values, one eye on the past and active steps toward the future. One change at a time. From what has always been the heart of our homes.