Cooking

Cooking

Cooking is the process of preparing food by use of heat, or through chemical reactions without the presence of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, reflecting unique environmental, economic, and cultural traditions.

Quotes

• 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

• Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 2. Subsec. 2.

• And nearer as they came, a genial savour
  Of certain stews, and roast-meats, and pilaus,
  Things which in hungry mortals' eyes find favour.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto V, Stanza 47.

• Yet smelt roast meat, beheld a huge fire shine,
  And cooks in motion with their clean arms bared.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto V, Stanza 50.

• 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, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book VIII, Epistle 23.

• A cook should double one sense have: for he
  Should taster for himself and master be.
  • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book XIV, Epistle 220.

• Oh, better no doubt is a dinner of herbs,
  When season'd by love, which no rancour disturbs
  And sweeten'd by all that is sweetest in life
  Than turbot, bisque, ortolans, eaten in strife!
  But if, out of humour, and hungry, alone
  A man should sit down to dinner, each one
  Of the dishes of which the cook chooses to spoil
  With a horrible mixture of garlic and oil,
  The chances are ten against one, I must own,
  He gets up as ill-tempered as when he sat down.
  • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part I, Canto II, Stanza 27.

• 'Tis burnt; and so is all the meat.
  What dogs are these! Where is the rascal cook?
  How durst you, villains, bring it from the dresser,
  And serve it thus to me that love it not?
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Act IV, scene 1, line 164.

• He that will have a cake out of the wheat must needs 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, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act I, scene 1, line 15.

• 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, in David G. Hartwell (ed.) Year's Best SF 6, p. 108 (Originally published in Science Fiction Age, March 2000)

• God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks.
  • John Taylor, Works (1630), Volume II, p. 85.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 138-39.

• Every investigation which is guided by principles of nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach.
  • Athenæus, Book VII, Chapter 2.

• Great pity were it if this beneficence of Providence should be marr'd in the ordering, so as to justly merit the Reflection of the old proverb, that though God sends us meat, yet the D— does cooks.
  • Cooks' and Confectioners' Dictionary, or the Accomplished Housewife's Companions, London (1724).

• Hallo! A great deal of steam! the pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding.
  • Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave Three.

• Ever a glutton, at another's cost,
  But in whose kitchen dwells perpetual frost.
  • John Dryden, Fourth Satire of Persius, line 58.

• Heaven sends us good meat, but the devil sends us cooks.
  • David Garrick, Epigram on Goldsmith's Retaliation.

• Poure faire un civet, prenez un lièvre.
  • To make a ragout, first catch your hare.
  • Attributed erroneously to Mrs. Glasse. In Cook Book, pub. 1747, said to have been written by Dr. Hill. See Notes and Queries, Sept. 10, 1859, p. 206. Same in La Varenne's Le Cuisinier Français. First ed. (1651), p. 40. Quoted by Metternich from Marchioness of Londonderry—Narrative of a visit to the Courts of Vienna. (1844).

• Digestion, much like Love and Wine, no trifling will brook:
  His cook once spoiled the dinner of an Emperor of men;
  The dinner spoiled the temper of his Majesty, and then
  The Emperor made history—and no one blamed the cook.
  • F. J. MacBeath, Cause and Effect. In Smart Set, Volume I. No. 4.

• Of herbs, and other country messes,
  Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses.
  • John Milton, L'Allegro, line 85.

• The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.
  • Alexander Pope, Satires, Horace, Epistle II, Book II, line 85.

• I never strove to rule the roast,
  She ne'er refus'd to pledge my toast.
  • Matthew Prior, Turtle and Sparrow.

• A crier of green sauce.
  • François Rabelais, Works, Book II, Chapter XXXI.

• He ruleth all the roste
  With bragging and with boste.
  • John Skelton, Why come ye not to Court? Of Cardinal Wolsey.

• The waste of many good materials, the vexation that frequently attends such mismanagements, and the curses not unfrequently bestowed on cooks with the usual reflection, that whereas God sends good meat, the devil sends cooks.
  • E. Smith, The Compleat Housewife (1727).

• Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
  And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
  • Sydney Smith, Recipe for Salad Dressing, Lady Holland's Memoir, Volume I, p. 426. Ed. 3d. ("Scarce suspected" in several versions).

• Velocius (or citius) quam asparagi coquantur.
  • More quickly than asparagus is cooked.
  • Suetonius, Augustus, 87. A saying of Augustus Cæsar.

• 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, Ballad of Bouillabaisse.

• "Very astonishing indeed! strange thing!"
  (Turning the Dumpling round, rejoined the King),
  "'Tis most extraordinary, then, all this is;
  It beats Penetti's conjuring all to pieces;
  Strange I should never of a Dumpling dream!
  But, Goody, tell me where, where, where's the Seam?"
  "Sire, there's no Seam," quoth she; "I never knew
  That folks did Apple-Dumplings sew."
  "No!" cried the staring Monarch with a grin;
  "How, how the devil got the Apple in?"
  • John Wolcot (Peter Pindar), The Apple Dumplings and a King.

See also

• Eating
• Food