Cookery Quotes

• One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

  Virginia Woolf

  Love, Food, Sleep

  1929 A Room of One's Own, ch.1.

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• As in the fine arts, the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilisation is marked by a gradual succession of triumphs over the rude materialities of nature, so in the art of cookery is the progress gradual from the earliest and simplest modes, to those of the most complicated and refined.

  Isabella Beeton

  Art, Civilization, Rude

  Isabella Beeton, Nicola Humble (2008). “Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management: Abridged Edition”, p.57, Oxford University Press

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• All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.

  Aldous Huxley

  Book, Cooking, Special

  Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

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• The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume; but a good stomach excels them all.

  William Penn

  Food, Cooking, Culinary

  William Penn (1782). “The Select Works of William Penn: In Five Volumes. ...”, p.127

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• Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.

  Robert A. Burton

  Art, Food, Science

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• Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach.

  Athenaeus

  Nature, Principles, Investigation

  Athenaeus (1854). “The Deipnosophists Or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus: With an Appendix of Poetical Fragments, Rendered Into English Verse by Various Authors and a General Index : in Three Volumes”, p.439

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• To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist - the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.

  Oscar Wilde

  Food, Oil, Cooking

  1880 Vera, or The Nihilists, act 2.

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• This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is - A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; All these you eat at Terre's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Cooking, Roaches, Taverns

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1870). “Catherine. Titmarsch among pictures and books. Fraser miscellanies. Christmas books. Ballads”, p.557

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• Herbs, and other country messes, Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses.

  John Milton

  Country, Dresses, Herbs

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office”, p.396

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• He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding.

  William Shakespeare

  Patience, Cake, Wheat

  William Shakespeare, Isaac Reed (1813). “The Plays of William Shakespeare”, p.737

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• He'd noticed that 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

  Sex, Food, Book

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• God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.

  Thomas Deloney

  Drinking, Devil, Meat

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• Cookery is a wholly unselfish art: All good cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for.

  Andre Simon

  Art, Cooking, Unselfish

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• He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding. Have I not tarried? Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting. Have I not tarried? Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening. Still have I tarried. Ay, to the leavening; but here's yet in the word 'hereafter' the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips.

  William Shakespeare

  Cake, Baking, Lips

  William Shakespeare (1819). “The Plays of Shakspeare”, p.206

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• Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements.

  Marcel Boulestin

  Art, Food, Home Cooking

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• Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.

  Fannie Farmer

  Food, Civilization, Cooking

  Fannie Merritt Farmer (1896). “Original 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book”, p.17, Courier Corporation

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• A cook should double one sense have: for he Should taster for himself and master be.

  Martial

  Should, Masters, Cooks

  Martial, Henry George Bohn (1914). “The Epigrams of Martial: Translated Into English Prose. Each Accompanied by One Or More Verse Translations, from the Works of English Poets, and Various Other Sources”

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• I have always read all the latest cookery books and magazines, from all over the world

  Delia Smith

  Book, Magazines, World

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• Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Sweet, Cooking, Devil

  Thomas Carlyle (1871). “The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.99

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• I have a good collection of cookery books. This is not so much because I like cooking, but because I like eating.

  Louise Brown

  Book, Cooking, Eating

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• The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

  Alexander Pope

  Eggs, Cooking, Vulgar

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Dyce (1835). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, being the prologue to the satires. Satires, epistles, and odes of Horace imitated. Epitaphs. The Dunciad, in four books”, p.75

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• Kissing don't last: cookery do!

  George Meredith

  Food, Kissing, Cooking

  'The Ordeal of Richard Feverel' (1859) ch. 28

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• In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Nature, Food, Cooking

  Poor Richard's Almanack (1734)

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• I seem to you cruel and too much addicted to gluttony, when I beat my cook for sending up a bad dinner. If that appears to you too trifling a cause, say for what cause you would have a cook flogged.

  Martial

  Dinner, Too Much, Causes

  Martial (1871). “The Epigrams of Martial”, p.359

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• Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Native American, Humor, Leaving

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.238, University of Georgia Press

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