You don't just make a gumbo, you build one

Now you can get everything you want, but back them a gumbo meant something - it told you what time it was.

You don't just make a gumbo, you build one. I don't just throw everything in the pot at once after the roux - it's the stock I make and the order I put the crab or shrimp or chicken in. You know a good gumbo because it has layers. You can taste each level the chef has put into it. The rice is important too; each grain has to be separate.

Chef Henderson in Mobile, quoted in M.W. Twitty, The cooking gene (2017), 196

When you see the words “delicious” and “polenta” in close proximity, you know the phrases “plenty of cheese” or “lashings of butter” can’t be far away

‘When you see the words “delicious” and “polenta” in close proximity, you know the phrases “plenty of cheese” or “lashings of butter” can’t be far away.’ Niki Segnit, author of Lateral Cooking, nails the simultaneous appeal and bemused distaste for polenta in one neat phrase. At its best, polenta is indescribably comforting, rich and naturally sweet, soft and luscious. At its worst, it’s lumpy, bland, claggy and, quite frankly, hard work. As so often is the case (and I think we can agree, I am entirely unbiased in this whole pursuit), the difference is butter.

O. Potts, Butter (2022), loc. 2,561

'Homemade' begs one question. Whose home? Have you actually seen people's homes?

'Homemade' begs one question. Whose home? Have you actually seen people's homes? Why should biscuits made at home be better than those baked in a factory, a factory that specialises in biscuits? I'm thinking here of Nairn's Oatcakes, Rakusen's Matzo Crackers and Carr's Water Biscuits. We don't seek treatment from amateur surgeons and Sunday dentists.

J. Meades, The plagiarist in the kitchen (2017), 143

Unpeeled potatoes are an abomination

SAUTE POTATOES

Do peel the potatoes - unpeeled potatoes are an abomination

Do not blanch them let alone boil them

Cut them into pieces the size of a malnourished walnut

J. Meades, The plagiarist in the kitchen (2017), 121

He promised to remove these carrots in a re-issue of the book, but they are still wrongly and redly there.

It [Lancashire Hotpot] needs very slow cooking in an oven. Into a family-sized, brown, oval-shaped dish with a lid, you place the following ingredients: best end of neck of lamb, trimmed of all fat; potatoes and onions thickly sliced. These go in alternate layers. Season well, cover with good stock, top with oysters, or, if you wish, sliced beef kidneys. There is no need for officious timing: you will know when it is done. Serve with pickled red cabbage and a cheap claret. In his novel The human factor, Mr Graham Greene has the effrontery to add carrots to the dish. He promised to remove these carrots in a re-issue of the book, but they are still wrongly and redly there.

Anthony Burgess, cited in J. Meades, The plagiarist in the kitchen (2017), 83-4

What does ‘from scratch’ really mean, anyway?

What does ‘from scratch’ really mean, anyway? It is all relative. We do not tell ourselves we are cheating when we buy packs of ready churned butter and bags of ready-ground sugar and flour, even though to cooks of earlier generation these would have seemed unimaginable luxuries. If a Victorian cooks wished to make a dish involving sugar, he or she would first have to chisel off a lump of hard sugar from a larger loaf and then grind this into a powder before finally pushing it through a series of sieves until it was fine enough to use

B. Wilson, The secret of cooking (2023), 13

She would have enjoyed cooking, if only it weren’t for her children

I got chatting to a woman who said she would have enjoyed cooking, if only it weren’t for her children. They were picky about eating lots of things, including onions, and this put her off trying new recipes because ‘what recipe doesn’t start with an onion?’

B. Wilson, The secret of cooking (2023), 4

There is no subjunctive perfect in Chinese

There was something of a tussle within the family over who would translate Dr Chao's prose into English. Her daughter did much of the work, only for Chao's linguist husband to step in and pepper the account with hectoring qualifications - 'There is no subjunctive perfect in Chinese,' he harrumphs, in an entirely unnecessary footnote to a paragraph about what to say when someone serves you Shark's Fin Soup. But at the end of the family feuding a firm text remained, often in quaintly off-kilter English, and with a few translation decisions that would endure.

J. Clements, The Emperor's feast (2021), 162

The English usually boil their vegetables to a submissive, sticky pulp

There is a great difference in the ordinary preparation of vegetables by the English and by us. The English usually boil their vegetables to a submissive, sticky pulp, in which the shape and, as some say, the flavor have long since been overcome. Our cooks do not cook their veg­etables nearly so long, are apt to like them crisp. The English do not use nearly as many onions as we do and they use practically no garlic at all. The little gardens are a kind of symbol of revolt against foreign methods.

J. Steinbeck [15 July 1943], Once there was a war (1959), 70

There is no conceptual divide between 'meat' and 'inedible rubbery bits' when butchering an animal carcass

 The Chinese don't generally divide the animal world into the separate realms of pets and edible creatures: unless you are a strict Buddhist (and bearing in mind certain regional preferences), you might as well eat them all. Likewise, there is no conceptual divide between 'meat' and 'inedible rubbery bits' when butchering an animal carcass: in China they traditionally favour the kind of nose-to-tail eating of which restaurateur Fergus Henderson, the notorious English purveyor of offal, could only dream. 

F. Dunlop, Shark's fin soup and Sichuan pepper (2008), 12

If the water is allowed to boil away to the point where part of the can is exposed to air, it will explode

Entirely new dishes were also created. In Argentina, dulce de leche, a thick dark caramel sauce made of sweetened condensed milk, became a national dish. There are numerous ways of cooking down condensed milk, but the popular technique is just to put the can in a pot of boiling water and leave it there for four to five hours. Simple, but there is a catch. If the water is allowed to boil away to the point where part of the can is exposed to air, it will explode. 

M. Kurlansky, Milk: a 10,000 year history (2018), 193

This is not recommended unless you are confident wielding a hammer

Before they are cooked, quinces are rock hard. They are perfectly easy to peel, but coring can be difficult and even dangerous. Recipes which blithely say 'peel and remove the cores' seem to ignore how difficult coring can be, One method is to put the quince on a workbench, place a piece of 18mm internal diameter copper pipe over the top of the core and bash the pipe through with a hammer (This is not recommended unless you are confident wielding a hammer, you cannot put the fruit in a vice as it will bruise) 

J. McMoreland Hunter and S. Dunster, Quinces: growing and cooking (2014)

Elsewhere in the book, I am joyfully reminded that the judgement of Paris awarded a quince, not an apple.

As a political matter, is home cooking today a reactionary or progressive way to spend one's time?

Is cooking a form of oppression, as many feminists argued (with some justification, I might add) in the 1960s? Back in the 1970s, KFC ran billboards depicting a family-sized bucket of fried chicken under the slogan "Women's Liberation." And so perhaps it was, and still is for many women even now... As a political matter, is home cooking today a reactionary or progressive way to spend one's time?

M. Pollan, Cooked (2013),131-2

The way I do it, it is definitely reactionary.

Pedantry and non-pedantry are indications only of temperament, not of culinary skill

And while we're about it: pedantry and non-pedantry are indications only of temperament, not of culinary skill. Non-pedants frequently misunderstand pedants and are inclined to adopt an air of superiority. 'Oh, I don't follow recipes,' they will say, as if cooking from a text were like making love with a sex-manual open at your elbow. Or: 'I read recipes, but only to get ideas.' Well, fine, but let me ask you this: would you use a lawyer who said 'Oh, I glance at a few statutes, but only to get ideas'? One of the best cooks I know automatically gets down a recipe book whenever she roasts a chicken.

J. Barnes, The pedant in the kitchen (2003), 14