“Cooks are in some ways very much like actors; they must be fit and strong, since acting and cooking are two of the most exacting professions. They must be blessed – or cursed, whichever way you care to look at it – with what is called the artistic temperament, which means that if they are to act or cook at all well, it cannot be for duds or dummies.”
Andre Simon (1877-1970),
The Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy (1952)
~~~
“And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.”
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
~~~
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
~~~
“Go, little one. In this world there are excellent callings. Leave us to languish; misery is our lot and we must die of misery. This is the time of fine fortunes, it only needs wit to make one, and wit you have. Go, little one, and perhaps this evening or tomorrow some fine house will open its doors to you. Go with what God has given you.”
Careme’s father gave him this advice when he abandoned him in a tavern at age 15 (1799)
~~~
“How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
~~~
“The dog that buried the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day – these were among the first creators of civilization. It was they….who taught our ancestors the art of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today, or of preparing for winter in summer’s time of plenty.”
Will Durant, ‘Our Oriental Heritage’ (1935)
~~~
“I want order and taste. A well displayed meal is enhanced one hundred per cent in my eyes.”
Antonin Careme (Marie-Antoine Careme) (1783-1833)
“the cook of kings and the king of cooks”.
~~~
“Some dishes are of such indisputable excellence that their appearance alone is capable of arousing a level-headed man’s degustatory powers. All those who, when presented with such a dish, show neither the rush of desire, nor the radiance of ecstasy, may justly be deemed unworthy of the honors of the sitting, and its related delights.”
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Meditation XIII in the ‘Physiologie du gout’
~~~
“Enchant, stay beautiful and graceful, but do this, eat well. Bring the same consideration to the preparation of your food as you devote to your appearance. Let your dinner be a poem, like your dress.”
Charles Pierre Monselet
(French journalist and author)
~~~
“Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.”
John Cage
~~~
“Seating themselves on the greensward, they eat while the corks fly and there is talk, laughter and merriment, and perfect freedom, for the universe is their drawing room and the sun their lamp. Besides, they have appetite, Nature’s special gift, which lends to such a meal a vivacity unknown indoors, however beautiful the surroundings.”
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
~~~
“Appetite, a universal wolf.”
Shakespeare
~~~
“Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.”
Anthony Trollope, English novelist (1815-1882)
~~~
“And through the hall there walked to and fro A jolly yeoman, marshall of the same, Whose name was Appetite; he did bestow Both guestes and meate, whenever in they came, And knew them how to order without blame.”
Edmund Spenser, English poet (1552?-1599)
‘Faerie Queene’
~~~
““Who riseth from a feast With that keen appetite that he sits down?”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
‘Merchant of Venice’
~~~
“Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.”
Peter de Vries, American writer. (1910-1993)
~~~
“A great city is one that handles art and garbage equally well.”
Bob Talbert, Newspaper columnist. (1936-1999)
~~~
“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.”
Federico Fellini, Italian film director. (1920-1993)
~~~
“Grilling, broiling, barbecuing – whatever you want to call it – is an art, not just a matter of building a pyre and throwing on a piece of meat as a sacrifice to the gods of the stomach.”
James Beard, ‘Beard on Food’
~~~
“Prepared and fast foods have given us the time and freedom to see cooking as an art form – a form of creative expression.”
Jeff Smith, ‘The Frugal Gourmet Keeps the Feast’
~~~
“Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements.”
Marcel Boulestin
~~~
“The preparation of good food is merely another expression of art, one of the joys of civilized living”
Dione Lucas
~~~
“Cooking is an art and patience a virtue… Careful shopping, fresh ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing – love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist – not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh, the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love.”
Keith Floyd, ‘A Feast of Floyd’
~~~
“The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure no slight pleasure.”
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, French essayist
(1533-1592) ‘Essays’
~~~
“Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.”
Robert Burton (1577-1640) English cleric and writer
‘Anatomy of a Melancholy’
~~~
“Cooking is an art, but you eat it too.”
Marcella Hazan
~~~
“Cookery is naturally the most ancient of the arts, as of all arts it is the most important.”
George Ellwanger (1848-1906)
‘Pleasures of the Table’ (1902)
~~~
“Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man is starving.”
O. Henry, ‘Heart of the West’
~~~
“To see the butcher slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable too – it really was – to see him cut it off so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite.”
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’
~~~
“A good cook is not necessarily a good woman with an even temper. Some allowance should be made for artistic temperament.”
X. Marcel Boulestin, chef, food writer (1878-1943)
‘Simple French Cooking for English Homes’ (1923)
~~~
“Cooks are in some ways very much like actors; they must be fit and strong, since acting and cooking are two of the most exacting professions. They must be blessed – or cursed, whichever way you care to look at it – with what is called the artistic temperament, which means that if they are to act or cook at all well, it cannot be for duds or dummies.”
Andre Simon (1877-1970),
‘The Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy’ (1952)
~~~
“If the skill of the artist had failed, if he had served some ill-prepared dish, the cook was put in irons on the spot, or else was led to the triclinium (dining-room) by two henchmen and severely flogged in the presence of the guests.”
C. Dezobry, ‘Rome au siecle d’Auguste’
~~~
“If the skill of the artist had failed, if he had served some ill-prepared dish, the cook was put in irons on the spot, or else was led to the triclinium (dining-room) by two henchmen and severely flogged in the presence of the guests.”
C. DezobryRome au siecle d’Auguste
~~~
“….his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes.”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
‘Much Ado About Nothing’
~~~
“It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun. Yet is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly carved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on the hackles of a fishing fly? Or the arrangements and textures on a butterfly’s wing? Not if you are a McDonalds’s man.”
Ray Kroc, creator of the McDonald’s franchise
~~~
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
Rachel Carson
~~~
“Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.”
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
~~~
“…..all the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.”
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American editor and critic.
~~~
“From Black pudding to pickled jellyfish, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. What we see and taste as beautiful depends largely on what our family and friends approve of — with just a little room for personal preference.”
Laurence Mound, Keeper of Entomology, British Museum, Natural History; Introduction to 1988 reprint of ‘Why Not Eat Insects’ by Vincent M. Holt (1885)
~~~
“to “set the standard for beauty in classical and modem cookery, and attest to the distant future that the French chefs of the 19th century were the most famous in the world.”
Marie Antonin Careme (1784-1833)
~~~
“To give life to beauty, the painter uses a whole range of colours, musicians of sounds, the cook of tastes — and it is indeed remarkable that there are seven colours, seven musical notes and seven tastes.”
Lucien Tendret (1825-1896)
‘La Table au pays de Brillat-Savarin’
~~~
“Gastronomy, has been the joy of all peoples through the ages. It produces beauty and wit and goes hand in hand with goodness of heart and a consideration of others.”
Charles Pierre Monselet (1825-88)
French journalist and author
~~~
“If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either.”
Joseph Wood Krutch, naturalist
~~~
“Pumpkin pie, if rightly made, is a thing of beauty and a joy – while it lasts…..”
‘The House Mother’
~~~
“They are all but stomachs, and we all but food; They eat us hungerly, and when they are full, They belch us.”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
~~~
“Thy food is such As hath been belched on by infected lungs.”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
~~~
“He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his.”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) ‘Twelfth Night’
~~~
“Cooks are in some ways very much like actors; they must be fit and strong, since acting and cooking are two of the most exacting professions. They must be blessed – or cursed, whichever way you care to look at it – with what is called the artistic temperament, which means that if they are to act or cook at all well, it cannot be for duds or dummies.”
Andre Simon (1877-1970)
‘The Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy’ (1952)
~~~
“Blessed relief for Mother and the other women in the household!”
Heinz slogan when it introduced the commercial version of ketchup in 1876.
~~~
“Receive the blood: and when that they are dead, Let me go grind their bones to powder small And with this hateful liquor temper it; And in that paste let their vile heads be baked.”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
‘Titus Andronicus’ Act V Scene II
~~~
“Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste, And of the paste a coffin I will rear And make two pasties of your shameful heads”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
‘Titus Andronicus’ Act V Scene II
~~~
“He has not so much brain as earwax.”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
‘Troilus and Cressida’
~~~
“’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 (1564-1616)
‘Taming of the Shrew’