Ever since man set aside an area just for cooking, there have been a few essential items that every kitchen needs. What are they?

First think about your kitchen and what you consider to be essential. First on your list would probably be a stove. You absolutely need your gas or electric stove, don’t you? It’s not likely that the first kitchens had access to either gas or electricity, so you can eliminate those from your list of essential items. However, cooking is an essential part of preparing meals, and as soon as man replaced foraging for food with hunting and gathering, he needed a way to cook food.

You are on the right track, though. While a kitchen does not need a 4 burner stove, it needs some sort of stove. You probably would panic if someone took your refrigerator away, but do you really need it? You would learn to adapt by buying fresh food every day, so having a fridge is not a kitchen priority.

What about the kitchen sink? That’s got to be an essential part of any working kitchen. Not really. You could quite easily take all the dirty dishes outside and wash them next to your nearest source of water, whatever that might be.

Now that we have stripped away some of the non-essentials, let’s take a look at what is absolutely necessary for preparing food for cooking. We need vessels to hold the food in and cook it in. You need a way to make the food hot. The other thing you simply cannot do without is a knife. A knife set would be preferable, but you can’t prepare food for cooking and eating without a knife for cutting.

The first kitchens were probably little more than lean-tos. They had to be open, because of the amount of smoke created and for protection from the rain. In these tiny cooking areas, having a knife block set of some sort was probably the first non-essential kitchen item, simply because knives make food preparation so much easier.

Over time, kitchens became more and more elaborate. Benches were added so that food could be cut up and cooked standing up. An area was set aside for water, for convenience. The last thing to be added to the kitchen was no doubt the icebox and that was probably only for royal kitchens, at least at first.

We must have some sort of collective memory of what the original kitchen was like, because even today, one’s collection of knives is a sign of a well-equipped kitchen. A good Wusthof knife set gets pride of place in the modern kitchen. Having one says that this kitchen prepares fine food.