quotations about cooking
'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Most women enjoy cooking, especially when it is done by the chef of a good restaurant.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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
People wouldn't think of making avant-garde cuisine at home. When people play basketball at home, they can't play like Michael Jordan.
FERRAN ADRIA
The Daily Beast, Jan. 29, 2014
Because cooks love the social aspect of food, cooking for one is intrinsically interesting. A good meal is like a present, and it can feel goofy, at best, to give yourself a present. On the other hand, there is something life affirming in taking the trouble to feed yourself well, or even decently. Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of liking what you make are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one else will know. In the end, the experimentation, the impulsiveness, and the invention that such conditions allow for will probably make you a better cook.
JENNI FERRARI-ADLER
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant
What the modern bride doesn't know would fill a book--a cookbook.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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
I approach cooking from a science angle because I need to understand how things work. If I understand the egg, I can scramble it better. It's a simple as that.
ALTON BROWN
interview, Sep. 12, 2002
There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.
MARIO BATALI
Humanities, 2004
The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.
E. B. WHITE
One Man's Meat
Once, several years ago, some friends and I enrolled in a cooking class taught by an Armenian matriarch and her aged servant. Since they spoke no English and we no Armenian, communication was not easy. She taught by demonstration; we watched (and diligently tried to quantify her recipes) as she prepared an array of marvelous eggplant and lamb dishes. But our recipes were imperfect; and, try as hard as we could, we could not duplicate her dishes. "What was it," I wondered, "that gave her cooking that special touch?" The answer eluded me until one day, when I was keeping a particularly keen watch on the kitchen proceedings, I saw our teacher, with great dignity and deliberation, prepare a dish. She handed it to her servant who wordlessly carried it into the kitchen to the oven and, without breaking stride, threw in handful after handful of assorted spices and condiments. I am convinced that those surreptitious "throw-ins" made all the difference.
IRVIN D. YALOM
Existential Psychotherapy
Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Naval Treaty
Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin.
P.J. O'ROURKE
The Bachelor Home Companion
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
All cooking is a matter of time. In general, the more time the better.
JOHN ERSKINE
The Complete Life
Her cooking is the missionary position of cooking. That is how everybody starts.
EGON RONAY
The Independent, Nov. 1, 1998
Standing back and staring blankly at the glass, he realized he had no idea what it meant to preheat. Obviously he heated it prior to something, but to what?
AIS
Evenfall
Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Summer Crossing
Give two cooks the same ingredients and the same recipe; it is fascinating to observe how, like handwriting, their results differ.
DAVID TANIS
Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys
Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of liking what you make are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one else will know. In the end, the experimentation, the impulsiveness, and the invention that such conditions allow for will probably make you a better cook.
JENNI FERRARI-ADLER
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant