quotations about cooking
The saddest thing in life is to marry a woman who looks like a cook--and isn't.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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
All cooking is a matter of time. In general, the more time the better.
JOHN ERSKINE
The Complete Life
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
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
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
If you're preparing a dinner for friends or a holiday dinner, make sure to only prepare recipes you are comfortable with and have cooked before. Cooking for others is not the time to try out a recipe for the first time. You end up spending all your time in the kitchen instead of enjoying your company.
RACHEL RAY
QVC Quisine eNewsletter
Sascha had decided she liked cooking. Unfortunately, cooking didn't like her back.
NALINI SINGH
Branded by Fire
Cooking for others had often been my way of offering care. So why, when I was alone, did I find myself trying to subsist on cereal and water?
JENNI FERRARI-ADLER
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant
Just remember--it's always a good idea to follow the directions exactly the first time you try a recipe. But from then on, you're on your own.
JAMES BEARD
The Best of Beard: Great Recipes from a Great Cook
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
Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin.
P.J. O'ROURKE
The Bachelor Home Companion
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
Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Naval Treaty
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
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
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
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