I've read hundreds of cookbooks. For my money, they are the bird.
On the whole, I rather disapprove of cookbooks, except for the literary ones, like Elizabeth David's.
I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume; but a good stomach excels them all.
A cookbook is not like being an author. It's writing down recipes; it's not writing.
A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the stove.
When I was younger, I read all the great food memoirs, by M.F.K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin and Julia Child and Nicolas Freeling and Ruth Reichl, and felt flooded with a sense of comfort and safety.
My passion for writing cookbooks really came from my love of collecting cookbooks.
Every author has to eventually write a food book.
There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.
I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. . . . I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.
Cookbooks bear the same relation to real books that microwave food bears to your grandmother?s.
