COOKING QUOTES IV

quotations about cooking

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

CHINESE PROVERB


In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

JULIA CHILD

New York Times, Nov. 26, 1986


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


"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


I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.

W.C. FIELDS

attributed, Chicken Soup for the Wine Lover's Soul


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 must be hard to cook if you anthropomorphisize your vegetables.

BILL WATTERSON

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes


Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin.

P.J. O'ROURKE

The Bachelor Home Companion


Mother doesn't cook, Ignatius said dogmatically, She burns.

JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE

A Confederacy of Dunces


You may say, "Oh, no. You can't touch a traditional recipe." But we ask: why can’t you? Back in 1350, a vinaigrette was a stew, so we ask, why not? This can be applied to any kind of cooking, and that's the shocking part of it. It kind of bends all the traditions. It's a good thing.

FERRAN ADRIA

interview, Toronto Life, Mar. 13, 2014


Unless you live alone in a cave or hermitage, cooking and eating are social activities: even hermit monks have one communal meal a month. The sharing of food is the basis of social life, and to many people it is the only kind of social life worth participating in.

LAURIE COLWIN

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen


Even a miser does not refuse meat to the cook.

EFIK

attributed, Day's Collacon


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


Bambi--see the movie! Eat the cast!

HENRY KELLY

Daily Telegraph, Feb. 26, 1994


We may live without poetry, music, and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books--what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope--what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love--what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?

OWEN MEREDITH

Lucile


When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else.... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant.

FERRAN ADRIA

interview, Toronto Life, Mar. 13, 2014


There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.

MARY FRANCES KENNEDY FISHER

Conversations with M. F. K. Fisher


The saddest thing in life is to marry a woman who looks like a cook--and isn't.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.

MARIO BATALI

Humanities, 2004


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