This encyclopedia provides an overview of the evolution of foods and cooking styles, food storage, utensils, and equipment from pre-history to the present day. The Encyclopedia of Kitchen History presents an A-to-Z overview of some 400 topics ranging from inventors like Alfred Fuller and Nils Dalen and such authors as Isabella Beeton and Charles Elme Francatelli, to baking, convenience foods, vermin, Roman cookery, Bakelite, ramadas, dumas, and genetic modification of food. Enhancing the text are detailed lists, including dyestuffs, herbs, types of faience and enameling, historic batteries de cuisine, and methods of flaking cutlery from chert and obsidian. Following generous cross-references, each entry concludes with a full list of source material from books, journals, newspapers, and online databases and news sources.

A thorough index directs the reader to the people, writings, recipes, inventions, processes, and foodstuffs that have formed the homemaker's history from the discovery of fire to the last space mission. Also included are a timeline of events in domestic history and a list of major authors of domestic history and their works.