From Open Flame to Water Bath: Thirteen Ways Cooks Apply Heat

Hot air surrounds the food and cooks it evenly on all sides, browning the outside through the Maillard reaction. The entry notes that oven roasting was once called baking, until roasting came to cover both in the late nineteenth century.

Baking uses enclosed, indirect heat, so it cooks more slowly and evenly than roasting over an open source. The entry cites archaeological evidence of bread baked at Shubayqa 1 in northeastern Jordan about 14,400 years ago, before agriculture.

Direct, radiant heat on the surface of the food, from above, below or the side, gives grilled food its char and smoky flavor. It contrasts with baking because the heat is exposed rather than enclosed.

A vase-shaped clay oven fired with wood or charcoal at its base. Flatbreads are slapped on the hot inner wall to bake in minutes, while skewered meat roasts in the smoky radiant heat, so one oven does both jobs.

Here the heat comes through a large flat iron griddle, the teppan. The entry dates this Japanese style to after the Second World War and notes that the tableside performance is separate from the technique, which is simply griddle cooking.

The food is fully submerged in hot fat or oil, which crisps and browns the outside while the inside cooks through. The entry records deep-fried dough in Canaan in the late second millennium BCE.

Small, evenly cut pieces are tossed in a little very hot oil in a wok. The entry says metal woks and stir-frying were widespread in the Song dynasty and that the wok took its rounded, thin-walled shape in the Ming dynasty.

Literally the breath of the wok, this is the smoky, charred aroma that comes from tossing food in a wok over an intense open flame. The entry treats it as a mark of a skilled Cantonese cook that depends on the wok, the heat and the speed of the toss.

The path turns to water. A vegetable or fruit is briefly scalded in boiling water and then shocked in iced water to stop the cooking, which deactivates enzymes that would degrade color, flavor and texture.

Food is cooked submerged in liquid held well below a simmer or boil. This gentle heat keeps delicate foods such as eggs, fish and fruit from toughening or breaking apart, and the flavored liquid is often reduced into a sauce.

A combination method that joins dry and moist heat: the food is browned at high heat, then cooked slowly in a covered pot with liquid until tender. The entry links the same sear-then-simmer logic to French daube, Chinese red-braising and American pot roast.

Food is sealed in a folded parchment or foil packet with a little liquid and baked, so it bakes and steams at once in its own juices. The entry says the method has been used in France since the seventeenth century.

The most controlled stop: vacuum-sealed food held in a water bath at a closely regulated low temperature for hours. The entry credits French chef Georges Pralus with inventing it in 1974 while cooking foie gras without excessive fat loss.