cooked mode definition, from Internet Connection, Inc.

[Unix, by opposition from raw mode] The normal character-input mode, with interrupts enabled and with erase, kill and other special-character interpretations performed directly by the tty driver. Oppose raw mode, rare mode. This term is techspeak under Unix but jargon elsewhere; other operating systems often have similar mode distinctions, and the raw/rare/cooked way of describing them has spread widely along with the C language and other Unix exports. Most generally, cooked mode may refer to any mode of a system that does extensive preprocessing before presenting data to a program.