If you cant handle the heat, get out of the kitchen: an analysis on The Art of Cooking

Barry’s humorously sarcastic tone emulates his opinion towards the simplicity of cooking, while at the same time reflecting his respect towards the hazards of cooking as well. He effectively utilized the use of prehistoric analogies, multiple examples, and the use of incomprehensible jargon.

    Barry begins most of his columns with a prehistoric analogy relating to his topic in order to comically launch straight into his argument. He tells a story about “cooking [being] invented in prehistoric times” when a “primitive tribe” killed an animal and accidentally “tripped and dropped” the animal “into the fire,” before they could “eat it raw.” With the use of cavemen for this analogy, Barry describes cooking as a simplistic art, something that even a simple caveman can do. With this analogy Barry is able to instantly hook the reader, and instill the idea that cooking isn’t really an arcane art that only a few people can perform. In his story he creates a character names “woog” who is responsible for “dropping the meat into the fire,” and becomes a victom of the tribes as they smell “the aroma of burning meat” and they decide “to eat Woog raw.” Barry furthermore adds to the simplicity of the cavemen here as he changes the analogy to add humor to his opening showing how dumb the cavemen were. He effectively creates a loose funny tone to begin his column allowing him to deliver his argument without having to worry about the reader not being engaged

Barry employs the use of multiple examples to provide evidence to support his claim that cooking can be hazardous. His first example is an account of a “dramatic true” incident that happened to him in his childhood when a “double boiler” filled with “cream chipped beef” suddenly “exploded violently” seeding “thousands of gallons of creamed chipped beef flying in all directions” with “tremendous force.” He employs this personal experience to share with the reader that he has experienced the hazards of cooking firsthand effectively adding to the ethos of his argument. He goes on to explain how he believed that “there are intelligent beings” out “in the universe” that will “one day detect traces of this particular entree” traveling “across the cosmos at nearly the speed of light.” He creates a cosmic metaphor that compares the explosion of his double boiler to cosmic explosion out in space. This metaphor is able to provide a viewing spectrum for the reader to effectively see how this experience scared him for life and provides legitimate evidence to support the hazards of cooking.

 Barry introduces a stumbling blog that amateur cooks will encounter and know as "uninterpretable" cooking jargon. he informs us that "gourmet chefs" create their recipes while simultaneously "snorking down cooking wine," thus resulting in ingredients such as "femel, shallots, capers, and arugula." He illustrates his disapproval towards these famous gourmet chefs, and their useless recipes that no one will be able to duplicate because of their non-existent ingredients.he uses this cooking jargon as a corner-stone for his argument against these useless gourmet chefs. He then explains that in order "to be a successful cook," one has to "learn how to adapt gourmet recipes to the "real world" by "making substitutions." He now switches to a more comic tone as he approaches the end of his column and tell how he "substitutes" "Three Musketeers bars" for "leeks" in a "sweet-potato recipe." Barry concludes that since no on understands this jargon, then all that can be done is to essentially make up your own recipe.

Barry realizes that he may receive some negative criticism on this topic, but he does an excellent job of downplaying cooking and recognizeing the dangers of the task as well. Through his use of analogies, multiple examples, and jargon Barry effectively shows how cooking while simplistic in nature, can be quite hazardous