The cooker is a relatively new invention. François de Cuvilliés, a French architect, is often credited as the first person to invent a cooker. In the early 1700s, he put a box around fire and probably called it le cooker. What we now know as cookers - the gas and electricity types - came much later. It was not until the mid-1800s that gas prototypes were put on display, and later still before they became a feature of everyday life.

However, as sure as dinosaurs had feathers, people had to eat before the 1800s. So what did they use? Here are a few archaic cooking methods from around the world, most of which are still in use today because they (whisper it) actually make better-tasting food than most cookers.

Earth Oven

The brutal daddy of all cooking methods, the earth oven, at its simplest, is a hole in the ground with a fire in it. You put the food on the fire, and cover the hole. They are one of the earliest signs of human settlement, and they are also the chief source of nourishment for Ray Mears. The earth oven has its own peculiar charm; it’s almost like watching evolution. The caveman, he sits there, and he has his open fire, but the meat just isn’t tasty enough for his liking. What to do? Dig a hole.

Haybox

The Haybox is the laziest of all pre-cookers. Food items that need to be cooked have to be heated to boiling point before they even reach the Haybox, at which point they are placed inside the contraption and insulated. The food, inside the Haybox, cooks itself through the residual insulated heat. Before you rush out and buy one though, remember that warm food is often bacteria-friendly. You have been warned.

Hot Salt/Sand Frying

Arguably the coolest cooking method ever devised, this involves filling a wok (easily the coolest cooking utensil, beating even the whisk) with either coarse sea salt or black sand and heating it. Once at the required temperature, dried food items such as egg in a shell or popcorn are buried in the salt, or peanuts are buried in the sand, until cooked. Used by street-side food vendors in China, and unlikely to be seen at your local Greggs.

Pickling

If one of the main purposes of cooking is to make food safe to eat by killing bacteria, then reach for the pickling jar. Food is usually pickled in brine or vinegar with a pH lower than 4.6 - plenty low enough to stave off any unwanted bugs. Another good thing about pickling? Okay then: pickling can actually make some foods more nutritious, introducing B-vitamins produced by the bacteria it kills. Please note - you cannot pickle a deep-fried mars bar.

Smoking

Smoking cooks food by exposing it to the smoke from burning wood or plant materials. However, while it is an effective way of both cooking and preserving many foods, particularly meat and fish, it is contended by some that the process of smoking can introduce carcinogens into food, and that by today’s stringent standards, there may remain some harmful toxins after the smoking process. Tastes damn good though.

Spitroasting

Not that spitroasting. The one where you put a rod through an animal (the rod being the ‘spit’) before turning it in front of an open fire. Renowned for its juicy, tender results, the spitroast is the king of meat-cooking methods, whether it be the pig with the apple in its gob or the headless chicken with rickets that ends up on your plate.

Tandoor

A Tandoor is a clay oven inside which foods are lowered for cooking. The Tandoor is awesomely powerful - the clay insulates the burning charcoal or wood inside, generating heat of up to 480°C. As a result, it’s common practice to leave the Tandoor lit, as building the required heat can take a long time. The word Tandoori means ‘pertaining to the Tandoor’ and is the basis for many British nights out.

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