Anyone who's spent a little time in the kitchen, whether at home or at work, knows that music and cooking are a great pairing. The percussion of the clanking of metal pans, the rhythm of the egg timer, the high-pitched falsetto singing of a piping kettle—music and cooking go together like "Bread and Butter" or "Ham 'N' Eggs".

I always listen to music whenever I'm cooking. It can be anything as long as I'm singing or moving (preferably both), but I'm especially fond of music that suits the activity I'm up to: "I Ran (So Far Away)" is in my running playlist, "Big Dipper" is in my "Stargazing" playlist, and I'm sure you can guess which playlist Drive My Car is in.

I figure a lot of people do this kind of thing, so for the music lovers and the cooks alike, here's some of the music I like cooking to when I'm feeling really literal:

We start in the more modern territory, opening things up with Mac DeMarco's "Cooking Up Something Good", followed by a few other rock songs along the same food vein. Moving down through the decades of rock jams about food (let's just pretend Led Zeppelin's Custard Pie is actually about pie, all right?), we then get a few hip-hop tracks. There aren't a whole lot of hip-hop songs about food, but my favorite of the three here is Tribe's "Ham 'n' Eggs".

From there, we move quickly into some funk and soul (I find my mashed potatoes are a thousand times better when James Brown has been screaming in my ear about them.) Funk may be the best genre to cook to, if you're the type to dance and sing in your kitchen. You can't help but be feeling yourself as you're flipping a burger and singing about what a bad mother you are (followed by a "huh!" or an emphatic "ow!").

My favorite from this part's gotta be "Memphis Soul Stew" because of all the food metaphors that get thrown in as King Curtis directs his band.

After that, we get a marathon of jazz (mostly big band) and a few oldies that sound like an old ad for Gold Bond that your grandma would have deep in her subconscious, having heard them on a radio the size of a refrigerator when she was just a young thing.

Some songs of note in this huge section are Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's duet on "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" (better known to many my age as the "Tomato, Tuhmahto, Potato Puhtahto" song), the Jazz instrumental "Carvin' the Bird" by Charlie Parker, and the doo-wop classic, "Mashed Potato Time" by Dee Dee Sharp.

Then, to close off this section comes a couple slow burners, namely Robert Johnson, the king of the Delta Blues, and his old number for which the album is named, "Come On In My Kitchen". If you can deal with the surface grain of this old recording, you won't be able to stop yourself from humming and singing that old refrain with him: "You better come on / In my kitchen / it's going to be raining outdoors."

This last section is the biggest of the playlist by far, but what can I say? People loved singing about food back then. These were slower times. Folks took the time to cook nearly every night unless it was a special occasion.

It's an art form that we find ourselves shifting away from. It's gone from a survival necessity to little more than just a hobby or a means of saving some dough for most, but it's in our blood. It's linked to us as inseparably as music. So throw on a little music and get to cookin'.

Your soul will thank you for it.