quotations about cooking
The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.
ALEXANDER POPE
Imitations of Horace
The saddest thing in life is to marry a woman who looks like a cook--and isn't.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.
MARIO BATALI
Food & Wine interview
'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.
JULIA CHILD
attributed, Recipes from Historic New England
Most women enjoy cooking, especially when it is done by the chef of a good restaurant.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Many a newlywed cooks just the way her husband had better like it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Bambi--see the movie! Eat the cast!
HENRY KELLY
Daily Telegraph, Feb. 26, 1994
Cooking is revelation and creation; and a woman can find special satisfaction in a successful cake or a flaky pastry, for not every one can do it: one must have the gift.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
Second Sex
Mother doesn't cook, Ignatius said dogmatically, She burns.
JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE
A Confederacy of Dunces
The repetitive phases of cooking leave plenty of mental space for reflection, and as I chopped and minced and sliced I thought about the rhythms of cooking, one of which involves destroying the order of the things we bring from nature into our kitchens, only to then create from them a new order.
MICHAEL POLLAN
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Yet smelt roast meat, beheld a huge fire shine,
And cooks in motion with their clean arms bared.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
Cooking is like poetry, a combination of ingredients, ideas and concepts in no particular order. If your creativity is influenced by what you've read, eaten or seen cooked, then it's a good thing, something to be applauded.
PHILIP DUNDAS
Cooking Without Recipes
There is not a good or a bad cuisine, just the one you like the best.
FERRAN ADRIÀ
book signing, Sep. 29, 2011
Sascha had decided she liked cooking. Unfortunately, cooking didn't like her back.
NALINI SINGH
Branded by Fire
"Never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink," he said. "Though I guess that presupposes that there is a wine I wouldn't drink."
LEV GROSSMAN
The Magicians
No one here will be surprised to hear me say that the Promethean fire which first raised humanity above the animal was the cooking fire.
BRIAN STABLEFORD
The Last Supper
No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.
LAURIE COLWIN
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
It is the art of cooking that makes the distinction of man and the lower animals; and a good cook who has a thorough knowledge of his art, should be entirely devoted to the gratification of taste, and the preservation of health.
M. UDE
attributed, Day's Collacon
If anything goes wrong at the table, the cook is forever dishonored; he survives not the disgrace; let him welcome death.
VATEL
attributed, Day's Collacon