Cookery Quotes

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

  Robert A. Burton

  Art, Food, Science

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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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• 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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• The art of cookery is the art of poisoning mankind, by rendering the appetite still importunate, when the wants of nature are supplied.

  Francois Fenelon

  Art, Want, Appetite

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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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• 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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• A crier of green sauce.

  Francois Rabelais

  Green, Sauce

  Francois Rabelais “Gargantua and Pantagruel: Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and his Son Pantagruel”, Library of Alexandria

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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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• 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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• 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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• Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art.

  Marcel Boulestin

  Art, Chemistry

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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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• 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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• 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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• Hunger finds no fault with the cookery.

  Henry George Bohn

  Food, Cooking, Faults

  Henry George Bohn, John Ray (1893). “A Hand-book of Proverbs: Comprising Ray's Collection of English Proverbs, with His Additions from Foreign Languages”

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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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• 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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• Kissing don't last: cookery do!

  George Meredith

  Food, Kissing, Cooking

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

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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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• Ever a glutton, at another's cost, But in whose kitchen dwells perpetual frost.

  John Dryden

  Kitchen, Frost, Cost

  John Dryden, Joseph Warton, John Warton (1811). “The Poetical Works of John Dryden: Containing Original Poems, Tales and Translations”, p.455

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• Would the cook were o' my mind!

  William Shakespeare

  Mind, Cooks

  William Shakespeare (2016). “The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition: The Complete Works”, p.1452, Oxford University Press

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• I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

  Erma Bombeck

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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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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• 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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• If your slave commits a fault, do not smash his teeth with your fists; give him some of the (hard) biscuit which famous Rhodes has sent you.

  Martial

  Food, Giving, Teeth

  Martial (1907). “The Epigrams of Martial”

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