quotations about cooking
I cook to inspire my husband to pay attention to me.
SONIA RUMZI
Simple Conversation
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
If god had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn't have given us grandmothers.
LINDA HENLEY
attributed, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grandmothers
Drink while you cook. Make it fun.
GWYNETH PALTROW
My Father's Daughter: Delicious
The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star.
ANTHELME BRILLAT-SAVARIN
Physiologie du Gout
If you are not working in a fast food restaurant or bakehouse, the same dish will never turn out in exactly the same way twice.
PHILIP DUNDAS
Cooking Without Recipes
Mother doesn't cook, Ignatius said dogmatically, She burns.
JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE
A Confederacy of Dunces
What we need is a big big cooking pot
Big enough to cook every wonderful
Beautiful, trust worthy, lovely idea we've got
HAPPY MONDAYS
"Harmony"
I really don't limit myself in any way. I just search for great flavors and marriages wherever they come from.
GEOFFREY ZAKARIAN
interview, Rappler
'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The Fifth Elephant
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
I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.
SHAUNA NIEQUIST
Bittersweet
A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way.
PAUL THEROUX
Sir Vidia's Shadow
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
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
To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a “home” might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.
EMILY POST
Etiquette
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
W.C. FIELDS
attributed, Chicken Soup for the Wine Lover's Soul
Every so often I would look at my women friends who were happily married and didn't cook, and I would always find myself wondering how they did it. Would anyone love me if I couldn't cook? I always thought cooking was part of the package: Step right up, it's Rachel Samstat, she's bright, she's funny and she can cook!
NORA EPHRON
Heartburn