Cooking and Digestion in the Malaboga

Dante was essentially building upon various well established metaphors here, especially for frauds, counterfeits and other false individuals who are tormented in this particular portion of the inferno. Cooking is digestion, a cooking as transformation, cooking as torment. In dante's version of an inferno, we have to remind ourselves this is not a transformative realm like we see in eastern traditions of hell. It doesn't even accomplish transformation via annihilation.