Culinary Quotes

This page is for culinary quotes and sayings that either bring a smile to you face or make you think! If you have you own favorites, please send them along via the comment section.

• “Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education” ~ Mark Twain
• “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must firs creat the universe~ Carl Sagan
• “I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with variation.”  ~ Madame Benoit
• “Fish, in order to taste right, must swim three times – in water, in butter, and in wine.” ~Polish Proverb
• There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can. ~Laurie Colwin
• “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, or in my case make a lemon meringue pie!” ~ Robert Wezwick
• “Jettison the Bread!” ~ Roger Wilkerson
• A crust eaten in peace is better then a banquet partaken in anxiety ~ Aesop
• “You don’t sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting needles.” ~  Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
• “What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.” ~  Nora Ephron
• “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.” ~ Mark Twain
• “My wife dresses to kill. She cooks the same way. ” ~ Henry Youngman
• “Non-cooks think it’s silly to invest two hours’ work in two minutes’ enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet. ” ~ Julia Child
• “Food is a important part of a balanced diet ~ Anonymous
• “A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed.” George Rosenbaum”How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?”~ Julia Child

• “The first printed mention of bagels… is to be found in the Community Regulations of Kracow, Poland, for the year 1610 which stated that bagels would be given as a gift to any woman in childbirth.” ~ Leo Rosten
• “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.”~ Pasteur
• “There is no such thing as a little garlic.” A. Baer
• “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline — it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” Frank Zappa
• “A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do.”  ~ P. J. O’Rourke
• “A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.” ~ Elsa Schiaparelli
• “I like neither new clothes nor new kinds of food.” ~ Albert Einstein
• “A good meal ought to begin with hunger.” ~ French Proverb
• “I like liquor — its taste and effects — and that is just the reason I never drink it.” ~ General Stonewall Jackson
• “A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz.”  ~ Humphrey Bogart
• “Wine is the most healthful and the most hygienic of beverages.” ~ Louis Pasteur
• “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance” ~ Benjamin Franklin
• “A messy kitchen is a happy kitchen and this kitchen is delirious.” ~ Anonymous
• “I feel the end approaching. Quick, bring me my dessert, coffee and liqueur.” ~ Pierette, Brillat-Savarin’s great aunt

• “A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.” ~ Old New York Proverb
• “I feel like a midget with muddy feet has been walking over my tongue all night.” ~  W.C. Fields
• “I exercise extreme self-control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.” W.C. Fields
• “A pâté is nothing more than French meat loaf that’s had a couple of cocktails.” ~ Carole Cutler
• “I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm.” ~ Robert Farrar Capon
• “A pessimist is someone who looks at the land of milk and honey and sees only calories and cholesterol.” ~ Anonymous
• “A philosopher is a person who doesn’t care which side his bread is buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway.”~ Joyce Brothers
• “When we decode a cookbook, every one of us is a practicing chemist. Cooking is really the oldest, most basic application of physical and chemical forces to natural materials.” ~ Arthur E. Grosser
• “A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn’t care to drink with — even if he drank.” H.L. Mencken
• “A raisin is a worried-looking grape.” ~ Anonymous
• “A recipe is not meant to be followed exactly — it is a canvas on which you can embroider.” ~ Roger Verge
• “When the waitress puts the dinner on the table the old men look at the dinner. The young men look at the waitress.”~  Gelett Burgess
• “A soup so thick you could shake its hand and stroll with it before dinner.” ~ Robert Crawford
•  ”All cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for.” ~ Andre Simon
•  ”When ordering lunch, the big executives are just as indecisive as the rest of us.” ~ William Feather
• “A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that’s when cuisine is truly exciting.” ~ Charlie Trotter
• ”I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.” ~ W.C. Fields
• “A smiling face is half the meal” ~ Latvian proverb
• “You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients.” ~ Julia Child
• “Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea.” ~ Pythagoras