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The Quotable Cook

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The Quotable Cook (Canada, UK)
By Kate Rowinski
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Publication Date: Nov. 2000
ISBN: 1585741647

Quotations about food are a dime a dozen — perhaps a dime a hundred.

Regular visitors to Ochef.com may notice that we feature a daily quote about food on our home page. Some are anonymous, or the originator of the saying has quietly slipped into obscurity. Some are by famous statesmen and world leaders, some come from chefs, some from cookbook authors, some from the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud and other books of faith. Sadly, relatively few come from women, and very, very few from women prior to the 20th Century.

Ochef.com staff members have spent hours poring over dusty copies of Bartlett’s and other compilations of quotations in various libraries, eking out a few more comprehensible food quotations for the daily page, worried that at some point we were going to run out. But as we have gone along, reading books on food, reviewing cookbooks, spending time with a dozen monthly food magazines, we have come to the inescapable realization that quotable statements about food, cooking and life are everywhere. We can’t review a cookbook without bumping into good quotes. In fact, most of our reviewers keep a pad of sticky notes alongside each book they’re reviewing to mark pages where they find a pithy quotation. (The foreword of even the most mundane cookbook is good for at least one quote, because the chef or TV personality endorsing the book has found time to be particularly eloquent). In fact, we’ve gotten to the point of worrying about running out of available days before we run out of quotes.

Into this arena, then, comes The Quotable Cook, by Kate Rowinski, a collection of nothing but quotations from notable cooks, writers, politicians, scientists, philosophers, poets, and other celebrities through the last three or four centuries.

Rowinski begins the book with a quote from Nicolas Chamfort that serves as a commentary on her own efforts: "The majority of those who put together collections of verses or epigrams resemble those who eat cherries or oysters; they begin by choosing the best and end by eating everything."

In this case, her efforts (and those of her publisher) are charming. The quotations she has selected include many of the best we have seen and quite a few we hadn’t. There is a lot of variety in her selection, and very few people are represented by more than one or two quotes (except perhaps Julia Child with six, Brillat-Savarin with 11, and the very eloquent Anonymous, who managed to get a fair number of sayings into the book.). There is a wonderful representation of traditional proverbs from around the world, naturally including such culinary powerhouses as France and Italy, but also words of wisdom from Tibet, Ghana, Estonia, the Philippines, Hawaii, Armenia, and many other countries and societies. Some of the quotations are humorous, some offer good advice; there are some we might have left out, but others that really make you think.

The quotations are loosely grouped into categories: cooking, hospitality, bread, vegetables, dessert, philosophy, etc., but as with appetizers at a party, it really doesn’t matter if you start at the beginning and go through a buffet line, or sample this and that and go back to the table again and again. The quotes are indexed by their originator, which is not particularly helpful, unless you are really in the mood for a good Woody Allen quote, a Mark Twain barb, or a Swedish proverb.

The book itself is well laid-out and very attractive. Clearly the publishers designed the book to appeal to people shopping for gifts.

If you’d like to curl up with a good book for a few minutes while the stew simmers, or you know a food lover who would, this is a charming book to choose. And if, unlike me, you have a memory for quotations, you will be able to impress your friends at dinner parties by offering up pithy, food-related comments on just about any subject under the sun.

The Quotable Cook (Canada, UK)

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