Well, I can only think of pemmican as the sole example of cooked-food that truly lasts. Given the very poor evidence of organic matter from Palaeo times(other than bones), I rather doubt evidence of pemmican will ever be found really far back. The again, I found this article:-


http://antifruitcake.com/hist2.php

So, pemmican certainly seems to have been used in the  Mesolithic-era, practised in North America. No evidence for pemmican in Palaeo Europe has ever been found, AFAIK, not even c.20,000 to 30,000 years ago.



The trouble with cooking is that it leads to oxidised fats, plus storing it for long periods worsens the process. It's no surprise, therefore, that canned-foods so often figure in food-poisoning cases(with much worse results than other kinds). Can't imagine it therefore being useful to store cooked-foods for long.

 There is also a raw-foodist belief, take it or leave it, that annihilating the natural bacteria within raw  meats(via cooking) allows "bad" or "unsuitable" bacteria to enter the meats, instead, thus causing additional problems.

The taste-preference for cooked-food does have some scientific evidence. There is increasing scientific evidence for the existence of opioids in cooked-foods(as well as dairy and grains), which are highly addictive and affect the brain in a morphine-like way. Plus, if the issue of taste for cooked or raw foods was solely due to previous habits, it doesn't really explain why wild animals often go wild for cooked junk-foods left in garbage by humans in camp-sites etc. I gather even New Scientist has suggested that consuming junk-food causes highly addictive  cravings, according to 1 article(though they try to claim that it's only because of the excess fats and sugars in foods rather than the fact that it's cooked):-


http://banzhaf.net/docs/newsci.html

Geoff



> Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 22:55:56 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Early cooking
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> As my enjoyment of raw meat and animal fat increased and I read the posts of
> other raw meat and fat eaters and saw that they come to prefer raw meat to
> cooked, it gradually occurred to me that Paleolithic peoples probably
> started cooking more as a method of food preservation than for taste, which
> others have hypothesized as well. Taste preference is commonly assumed
> (without evidence) by cooked-food-eating "scientists" to be the main reason. 
> 
> Pemmican is one of the healthiest and most satisfactory of the partially
> cooked foods, yet I only find reference to it going back 7000 years. Does
> anyone have earlier dates?

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