In The Kitchen

Kissing don’t last: cookery do!

George Meredith (1828–1909), English author. Mrs. Berry, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, ch. 28 (1859).

I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. . . . The recipes were to be the routine ones: how to make dry toast, instant coffee, hearts of lettuce and brownies. But as an added attraction, at no extra charge, my idea was to put a fried egg on the cover. I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.

Groucho Marx (1895–1977), U.S. comic actor. Groucho and Me, ch. 1 (1959).

If cooking becomes an art form rather than a means of providing a reasonable diet, then something is clearly wrong.

Tom Jaine (b. 1943), British editor of The Good Food Guide. Daily Telegraph (London, 19 Oct. 1989).

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 (1795–1881), Scottish essayist, historian. Teufelsdröckh, in Sartor Resartus, bk. 2, ch. 7 (1833–34).

There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938), U.S. author. The Web and the Rock, ch. 28 (1939).
 

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 (1854–1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author. Prince Paul, in Vera, or The Nihilists, (1880).

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 (1873–1960), U.S. hostess. Etiquette, ch. 34 (1922).

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.

Owen Meredith [Edward R. Bulwer, Earl of Lytton] (1831–91), English poet, diplomat. Lucile, pt. 1, cto.2, st. 19.
 

’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English dramatist, poet. Servingman, in Romeo and Juliet, act 4, sc. 2.

Hell is a place where all the cooks are British.

Euro–joke quoted in Business Week, (November 6, 1995).