It’s been theorized that this was from people eating animals and vegetables that were burnt in a forest fire, so maybe a lot of people died in the fire. Hell, maybe it was the folks who were caught in the forest fire that were the first cooked meals.
What about butter? Ok, so no one died or anything.
But still. I can see milk, cause baby cows drink that, and of course we’d copy them. But you have to churn and churn and churn milk to get butter. Who thought that? “I"Ve been churning this for an hour…I’m going to churn it some more.”*
There was some lady who was riding a camel and she was uncomfortable. So she took the goat stomach that she kept the milk in and sat on it. The journey was very bumpy. By the end of the journey there was butter. The same lady also invented cheese. I am not making this up.
Don’t you people know anything? If you read Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children books you’ll find out that one woman named Ayala invented everything, including penicillan. And sex. Lots and lots of sex.
Yeast was the one that got me. You have a nice ball of flour and water. You forget and leave it out for a couple of hours. When you come back it’s all swollen up like roadkill in the sun and obviously spoiled. Why would you decide to throw it in the fire and then eat it anyway. (I know - the answer was undoubtedly because you were really hungry and didn’t have any other food.)
I was toasting some sesame seeds in a pan on the stove. They evidently got a bit warm and about half a dozen popped into the teeniest popsesame. So maybe someone was toasting corn for a little extra flavor and popcorn was born?
I’m betting the yeast/bread thing happened because somebody was really hungry and not willing to waste anything. Grinding wheat by hand takes forever. If I’d had to grind enough for a small loaf of bread, even though I was aiming for some sort of gruel, alcoholic drink or cracker or whatever, no way would I dump it out because it was a little funky looking. A good bit of cooking heat will knock a lot of funk down to acceptable levels.
I’ve got to say that the first person to try cheese was very brave and/or hungry. Same goes for oysters and clams.