Unfortunately, we don't even know what species invented fire! The date when fire was beginning to be controlled by humans and one of the problems is we only have limited evidence to show of it. For example, we have stone hearths which could be up to 300,000 years old (probably a bit later though, original estimate was 230,000) and we have evidence far before that with scorch marks on bones. But there is little evidence without hearths or bones. If they controlled fire before using it to cook, then we'd have no idea and little evidence, with no real chance of us finding it out. They could have, for example, been terrified of fire, and being able to control it was a sign of great power, maybe making you a leader for example. We don't even know how they found it. Presumably they isolated or kept a fire going from something such as a forest fire and later discovered flints etc by accident. Different groups may have made the discoveries differently, with some learning it off others and some isolating fires and some stealing flames from other groups and some discovering it from forest fires and others discovering how friction creates heat etc.

The first control of fires and the consistent control of fires are of course different things. Isolated groups might have controlled fire but when would most people be using fire? That might only be 120,000 years ago.

Humans should have been instinctually afraid of fire. It killed, after all. But they would have almost certainly eaten cooked food long before the first one learnt to control fire, by eating the partially cooked remains of animals killed in forest fires, lightning strikes etc. After a fire, there'd be dead animals and easy pickings. They may have figured out how, roughly, to control fire thanks to forest fires. If forest fires, grass fires and so on attracted people for food when it was ending, they'd probably see the sites where the fire ended and put two and two together. I wouldn't be able to do it, so I guess we have to thank the Einsteins of their generation.