quotations about cooking
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
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
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
The saddest thing in life is to marry a woman who looks like a cook--and isn't.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Most women enjoy cooking, especially when it is done by the chef of a good restaurant.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
It must be hard to cook if you anthropomorphisize your vegetables.
BILL WATTERSON
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Summer Crossing
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
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
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
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
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
In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.
JULIA CHILD
New York Times, Nov. 26, 1986
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"
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 not a good or a bad cuisine, just the one you like the best.
FERRAN ADRIÀ
book signing, Sep. 29, 2011
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
The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.
ALEXANDER POPE
Imitations of Horace
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