A kitchen is a room used for food preparation and sometimes entertainment. A modern kitchen is typically equipped with a stove and microwave oven and has a sink with water on tap for cleaning food and dishwashing. Modern kitchens often also feature a dishwasher. Some installations to store food usually also are present, either in the form of an adjacent pantry or more commonly cabinets and a refrigerator.

Although the main function of a kitchen is cooking, it can be the center of other activities as well, especially within homes, depending on its size, furnishing, and equipment. If a washing machine is present, washing and drying laundry is also done in the kitchen. The kitchen may also be the place where the family eats, provided it is large enough. Sometimes, it is the most comforting room in a house, where family and visitors tend to congregate.

The evolution of the kitchen
The development of the kitchen has been intricately and intrinsically linked with the development of the cooking range or stove. Until the 18th century, open fire was the sole means of heating food, and the architecture of the kitchen reflected this. When technical advances brought new ways to heat food in the 18th and 19th centuries, architects took advantage of newly-gained flexibility to bring fundamental changes to the kitchen. Water on tap only became gradually available during industrialization; before, water had to be collected from the nearest well and heated in the kitchen.

Ancient history
The houses in Ancient Greece were commonly of the atrium-type: the rooms were arranged around a central courtyard. In many such homes, a covered but otherwise open patio served as the kitchen. Homes of the wealthy had the kitchen as a separate room, usually next to a bathroom (so that both rooms could be heated by the kitchen fire), both rooms being accessible from the court. In such houses, there was often a separate small storage room in the back of the kitchen used for storing food and kitchen utensils.

In the Roman Empire, common folk in cities often had no kitchen of their own; they did their cooking in large public kitchens. Some had small mobile bronze stoves, on which a fire could be lit for cooking. Wealthy Romans had relatively well-equipped kitchens. In a Roman villa, the kitchen was typically integrated into the main building as a separate room, set apart for practical reasons of smoke and sociological reasons of the kitchen being operated by slaves. The fireplace was typically on the floor, placed at a wall--sometimes raised a little bit--such that one had to kneel to cook. There were no chimneys.

Middle Ages 
The roasting spit in this European medieval kitchen was driven automatically by a propeller—the black cloverleaf-like structure in the upper left.Early medieval European longhouses had an open fire under the highest point of the building. The "kitchen area" was between the entrance and the fireplace. In wealthy homes there was typically more than one kitchen. In some homes there were upwards of three kitchens. The kitchens were divided based on the types of food prepared in them. In place of a chimney, these early buildings had a hole in the roof through which some of the smoke could escape. Besides cooking, the fire also served as a source of heat and light to the single-room building. A similar design can be found in the Iroquois longhouses of North America.

In the larger homesteads of European nobles, the kitchen was sometimes in a separate sunken floor building to keep the main building, which served social and official purposes, free from indoor smoke.

The first known stoves in Japan date from about the same time. The earliest findings are from the Kofun period (3rd to 6th century). These stoves, called kamado, were typically made of clay and mortar; they were fired with wood or charcoal through a hole in the front and had a hole in the top, into which a pot could be hanged by its rim. This type of stove remained in use for centuries to come, with only minor modifications. Like in Europe, the wealthier homes had a separate building which served for cooking. A kind of open fire pit fired with charcoal, called irori, remained in use as the secondary stove in most homes until the Edo period (17th to 19th century). A kamado was used to cook the staple food, for instance rice, while irori served both to cook side dishes and as a heat source.

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A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a culinary dish. It is also used in medicine or in information technology (user acceptance). A doctor will usually begin a prescription with recipe, usually abbreviated to Rx or an equivalent symbol.

The earliest known recipes date from approximately 1600 BC and come from an Akkadian tablet from southern Babylonia. There are also ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics depicting the preparation of food.

Many ancient Greek recipes are known. Mithaecus's cookbook was an early one, but most of it has been lost; Athenaeus quotes one short recipe in his Deipnosophistae. Athenaeus mentions many other cookbooks, all of them lost.

Roman recipes are known starting in the 2nd century BCE with Cato the Elder's De Agri Cultura. Many other authors of this period described eastern Mediterranean cooking in Greek and in Latin. Some Punic recipes are known in Greek and Latin translation.

The large collection of recipes De re coquinaria, conventionally entitled 'Apicius', appeared in the 4th or 5th century and is the only more or less complete surviving cookbook from the classical world. It lists the courses served in a meal as 'Gustatio' (appetizer), 'Primae Mensae' (main course) and 'Secundae Mensae' (dessert). It begins each recipe with the Latin command "Take...", Recipe....

Arabic recipes are documented starting in the 10th century; see al-Warraq and al-Baghdadi.

King Richard II of England commissioned a recipe book called Forme of Cury in 1390, and around the same time another book was published entitled Curye on Inglish, "cury" meaning cooking. Both books give an impression of how food for the noble classes was prepared and served in England at that time. The luxurious taste of the aristocracy in the Early Modern Period brought with it the start of what can be called the modern recipe book. By the 15th century, numerous manuscripts were appearing detailing the recipes of the day. Many of these manuscripts give very good information and record the re-discovery of many herbs and spices including coriander, parsley, basil and rosemary, many of which had been brought back from the Crusades.

Modern recipes and cooking advice
With the advent of the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous books were written on how to manage households and prepare food. In Holland and England competition grew between the noble families as to who could prepare the most lavish banquet. By the 1660s, cookery had progressed to an art form and good cooks were in demand. Many of them published their own books detailing their recipes in competition with their rivals. Many of these books have now been translated and are available online.

By the 19th century, the Victorian preoccupation for domestic respectability brought about the emergence of cookery writing in its modern form. Although eclipsed in fame and regard by Isabella Beeton, the first modern cookery writer and compiler of recipes for the home was Eliza Acton. Her pioneering cookbook, Modern Cookery for Private Families published in 1845, was aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef. This was immensely influential, establishing the format for modern writing about cookery. It introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts. Contemporary chef Delia Smith called Acton "the best writer of recipes in the English language." Modern Cookery long survived Acton, remaining in print until 1914 and available more recently in facsimile.

Acton's work was an important influence on Isabella Beeton, who published Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in 24 monthly parts between 1857 and 1861. This was a guide to running a Victorian household, with advice on fashion, child care, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, and industrialism. Of the 1,112 pages, over 900 contained recipes. Most were illustrated with coloured engravings. It is said that many of the recipes were plagiarised from earlier writers such as Acton, but the Beetons never claimed that the book's contents were original. It was intended as a reliable guide for the aspirant middle classes.

The American cook Fannie Farmer (1857–1915) published in 1896 her famous work The Boston Cooking School Cookbook which contained some 1,849 recipes.