In the fifth millennium BC, did women rule Old Europe?

According to David W. Anthony in The Lost World of Old Europe, women developed metallurgy, arguably the greatest technological achievement in the history of man. It wasn’t the village smithee standing under the spreading chestnut. Although they did not rule, it was the ladies changed the history of mankind.

Starting with bread-baking, women extended their mastery of pyrotechnology to the baking of clay for vessels and figurines. They learned how to adorn clay with colors derived from local deposits of malachite and azurite, which happen to be copper ores.

In a very hot kiln, copper ore combines with charcoal to produce copper and slag. By accident, therefore, women tending the hearth discovered the magical process of smelting sometime around 4,500 BC, fully a millennium and a half before similar developments in the Middle East, Egypt, and the Indus Valley.

Now is the time of bounty, the season when little baskets in the market brim sinfully with berries so ripe you cannot in good conscience pass them by. They must be rescued and carried swiftly home to be consumed before sun-up.

From Mexico there are mangoes too broad to hold in one hand and giant red papayas nearly too broad to hold in two. Yellow peaches have arrived from local orchards as have blackberries the size of gumballs. All types of summer squash are perfect.

Amid such abundance, Mr. Henry hesitates to complain. These days, however, bananas, nature’s most perfect food, are rather too small and too ripe. Here is Mrs. Henry’s peerless recipe for banana mini-muffins. They freeze wonderfully.

Cream together 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of sugar.
Beat in 2 eggs, one at a time.
Mix dry ingredients:
1 cup unbleached white flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup wheat bran
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
Mash 3 ripe bananas with 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Add dry ingredients to butter/egg/sugar.
Add mashed bananas.
Add ½ cup plain non-fat yogurt.

Lightly grease mini-muffin pan. (If preparing large muffins you may elect to use silicone cups.) Bake in convection oven at 350 degrees until brown, about 10 minutes.

When Mary came in from the country carrying a diapered basket of fresh-laid hens eggs, Mr. Henry stared at their beautiful light blue and speckled brown shells wondering, “How can he do justice to these most perfect of nature’s industrial designs?”

For the preparation of perfect scrambled eggs unsullied by even the slightest fatty aroma from his trusty cast iron pan, a pan that did such yeoman service these many years, he decided that the time was finally ripe to spend an astonishing $99 on the ultimate professional stove-top tool – a pan that would not waste even one morsel of Mary’s eggs stuck to its sides, a pan that would not force Mr. Henry to further inflame his mouse-flicking right forearm tendon in a heavy-duty clean-up.

Mr. Henry is in love with his new 8-inch All-Clad copper core fry pan with stainless steel face.

For the ultimate three-minute breakfast or lunch, place your copper core pan on a low flame for a good two minutes until its magical golden center is ready to radiate. (A dollop of crème fraîche in the eggs lends a marvelous creamy tanginess.) You may use a metal spatula here – none of this mamby-pamby plastic – because the stainless steel is not harmed by tiny scratches. Toast two slices of Amy’s organic peasant wheat sourdough bread on which to place your velvety confection. Throw in butter. Almost as soon as your eggs hit the pan they are done.

If you soak your pan while you dine, the clean-up is effortless. The gently flared lip, the long metal oven-ready handle, and most of all the superior browning capabilities of the stainless face with copper core have left Mr. Henry in a swoon not matched since he first drove Mrs. Henry’s BMW. Car owners speak of the interface between man and machine. Mr. Henry is fully satisfied by All-Clad’s high-speed performance.