Mumfords Culinary Quotes

Beer has long been the prime lubricant in our social intercourse and the sacred throat-anointing fluid that accompanies the ritual of mateship. To sink a few cold ones with the blokes is both an escape and a confirmation of belonging. ~ Rennie Ellis

As one who appreciated the tragic side of eating, it seemed to him that anything other than fruit for dessert implied a reprehensible frivolity, and cakes in particular ended up annihilating the flavour of quiet sadness that must be allowed to linger at the end of a great culinary performance. ~ Manuel Vazquez Montalban

It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him. ~ Robertson Davies

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

English wine is like Belgian rock or German disco: a waste of everyone's time and money. ~ Jay Rayner

Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation. ~ Samuel Johnson

In fine, the truffle is the very diamond of gastronomy. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

My presence in California will bring a new, inspiring culinary environment to life, and I'm delighted to share my creative techniques and evolving fresh ideas with the Beverly Hills community. ~ Jean-Georges Vongerichten

God made only water, but man made wine. ~ Victor Hugo

If you could choose to master a single ingredient, no choice would teach you more about cooking than the egg. It is an end in itself; it's a multipurpose ingredient; it's an all-purpose garnish; it's an invaluable tool. The egg teaches your hands finesse and delicacy. It helps your arms develop strength and stamina. It instructs in the way proteins behave in heat and in the powerful ways we can change food mechanically. It's a lever for getting other foods to behave in great ways. Learn to take the egg to its many differing ends, and you've enlarged your culinary repertoire by a factor of ten. ~ Michael Ruhlman

I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts
and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about the opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English civil war, of French wines
I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time? ~ Zadie Smith

Food that's served at the table in a paper parcel always creates a remarkable culinary moment when opened, because the package is full of aromatic steam from the lightly cooked ingredients inside. ~ Yotam Ottolenghi

In one of history's most bizarre chains of causation, the brutal, efficient newcomers were driven by a hunger for, of all things, culinary ingredients that today lie largely unused in most Western kitchens. ~ William J. Bernstein

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

It is an oldish question, but not perhaps a very interesting one, whether cooking is an art or not. ~ Robert Hughes

It's food too fine for angels, yet come, take and eat thy fill! ~ Edward Taylor

I'm not a purist. Coffee drinking minus cream and sugar is an acquired taste. I'm still not sure it isn't like telling chefs to dispense with spices in cooking. ~ Kevin Sinnott

My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce, and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

In my mother's book, a vegetarian is somebody who is not concern with his or her diet and health. "Someone who prefer bush and grass, as if they is sheeps and cows, is somebody who don't have enough food to put in his mouth," she always say.
Only vegetarians eat dryfood regularly - and like to eat it, too. It is not considered normal for a person to cook food that doesn't have some amount o' meat or fish to go with it. Only someone who is starving, who don't have money to buy a fish head or a single flying fish or even the head of a dolphin - in other words, a person who is "catching his arse" - has to eat dryfood. A person at this stage is a person one remove from having to cook bakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. ~ Austin Clarke

It is not 'only' food, I said heatedly. There's meaning hidden underneath each dish. ~ Ruth Reichl

Japan has somehow managed to achieve the ideal attitude to eating: an obsession with culinary pleasure that is actually conductive to health. ~ Bee Wilson

Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people. ~ Samuel Johnson

It was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions. ~ Lewis Carroll

You do not sew with a fork and I see no reason why you should eat with knitting needles. ~ Henry Beard

Home base is the support system where we have a culinary team, my own writers because of the shows and the books and stuff, we have a culinary team of about six people. Marketing, public relations, accounting and all that sort of stuff. ~ Emeril Lagasse

My family dumplings are sleek and seductive, yet stout and masculine. They taste of meat, yet of flour. They are wet, yet they are dry. They have weight, but they are light. Airy, yet substantial. Earth, air, fire, water; velvet and elastic! Meat, wheat and magic! They are our family glory! ~ Robert P. T. Coffin

I haven't waited to be summoned for my big moment by a tap on the shoulder from a mysterious, benevolent stranger. It doesn't work that way where I'm from. You make your own opportunities where I'm from. ~ Kwame Onwuachi

The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today. ~ Lewis Carroll

All millionaires love a baked apple. ~ Ronald Firbank

I wanted to write a food book, but I'm not a chef or an expert on culinary matters, to put it mildly. ~ Kate Christensen

Those from whom nature has withheld taste invented trousers. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

As the days grow short, some faces grow long. But not mine. Every autumn, when the wind turns cold and darkness comes early, I am suddenly happy. It's time to start making soup again. ~ Leslie Newman

I never met a Cab I didn't like. ~ Graham Kerr

Having examined three thousand haiku poems - two persimmons. ~ Masaoka Shiki

Reward is a happy customer - and an empty plate. ~ Jacques Torres

Luella had been Lou's favorite grandma. Some grandmas took their grandchildren to parks, or bought them books and dolls, or shared their special stories. Her grandma shared her recipes. She taught Lou how to check when a roast turkey was done, chop veggies without cutting off a finger, and bake a coconut cake grown men swooned over. A fog of comforting smells had perpetually blanketed her kitchen- an expression of her love so strong you could taste it. Lou caught the culinary bug during those early days and loved that she was named after her grandma, even if Lou believed she'd never make food quite as delicious. ~ Amy E. Reichert

The savor of the water mint rejoiceth the heart of men. ~ John Gerard

Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way. ~ Truman Capote

The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence. ~ George Sarton

Downstairs, I could hear the return of a long-lost sound: Amy making breakfast. Banging wooden cupboards (rump-thump!), rattling containers of tin and glass (ding-ring!), shuffling and sorting a collection of metal pots and iron pans (ruzz-shuzz!). A culinary orchestra tuning up, clattering vigorously toward the finale, a cake pan drumrolling along the floor, hitting the wall with a cymballic crash. ~ Gillian Flynn

It is part of the novelist's convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance ... ~ Virginia Woolf

Culinary incompetence could explain the first six or seven meals, but more than that had to be culinary malice. ~ Jeff Strand

The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night. ~ Joe Bastianich

There are two Italies ... The one is the most sublime and lovely contemplation that can be conceived by the imagination of man; the other is the most degraded, disgusting, and odious. What do you think? Young women of rank actually eat - you will never guess what - garlick! Our poor friend Lord Byron is quite corrupted by living among these people, and in fact, is going on in a way not worthy of him. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley