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FOOD QUOTES SECTION

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Soup Quotes

“Bouillabaisse, this golden soup, this incomparable golden soup which embodies and concentrates all the aromas of our shores and which permeates, like an ecstasy, the stomachs of astonished gastronomes. Bouillabaisse is one of those classic dishes whose glory has encircled the world, and the miracle consists of this: there are as many bouillabaisses as there are good chefs or cordon bleus. Each brings to his own version his special touch.”
Curnonsky (1872-1956)

“A soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.”
Willa Cather, 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' (1927)
 

“Cold soup is a very tricky thing and it is the rare hostess who can carry it off. More often than not the dinner guest is left with the impression that had he only come a little earlier he could have gotten it while it was still hot.”
Fran Lebowitz, journalist
 

“Good manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup.”
Bennett Cerf, humorist, publisher (1898-1971)
 

“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, 'Home Cooking' (1988)
 

“To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.”
Laurie Colwin
 

"There was a Young Lady of Poole,
Whose soup was excessively cool;
So she put it to boil,
       by the aid of some oil,
That ingenious Young Lady of Poole."
Edward Lear, English artist, writer; known for his 'literary nonsense' & limericks  (1812-1888)
 

“From time immemorial, soups and broths have been the worldwide medium for utilizing what we call the kitchen byproducts or as the French call them, the 'dessertes de la table' (leftovers), or 'les parties interieures de la bete', such as head, tail, lights, liver, knuckles and feet.”
Louis P. De Gouy, The Soup Book (1949)
 

“Good soup is one of the prime ingredients of good living.  For soup can do more to lift the spirits and stimulate the appetite than any other one dish.”
Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

“One whiff of a savory aromatic soup and appetites come to attention.  The steaming fragrance of a tempting soup is a prelude to the goodness to come.  An inspired soup puts family and guests in a receptive mood for enjoying the rest of the menu.”
Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

“It is thought that potato water is unhealthy; and therefore do not boil potatoes in soup, but boil elsewhere, and add them when nearly cooked.”
Catharine E. Beecher
'Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book' (1846)
 

“Soup is cuisine's kindest course.  It breathes reassurance; it steams consolation; after a weary day it promotes sociability, as the five o'clock cup of tea or the cocktail hour.”
Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

“Soup is the song of the hearth...  and the home.”
Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

“Soup is to the meal, what the hostesses smile of welcome is to the party.  A prelude to the goodness to come.”
Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

“Soups challenge us, because an enticing flavorful stew can be as different from the thin watery beverage sometimes erroneously called soup as a genuine green turtle is from the mock turtle.”
Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

“There is nothing like a plate or a bowl of hot soup, it's wisp of aromatic steam making the nostrils quiver with anticipation, to dispel the depressing effects of a grueling day at the office or the shop, rain or snow in the streets, or bad news in the papers.”
Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

“This is not that, and that is certainly not this, and at the same time an oyster stew is not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, an oyster soup should never be called a stew, nor stew soup.”
M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992)
 

“The soup, thin and dark and utterly savorless, tasted as if it had been drained out of the umbrella stand.”
Margaret Halsey (1910-1997) American author
 

"Do you have a kinder, more adaptable friend in the food world than soup? Who soothes you when you are ill? Who refuses to leave you when you are impoverished and stretches its resources to give a hearty sustenance and cheer? Who warms you in the winter and cools you in the summer? Yet who also is capable of doing honor to your richest table and impressing your most demanding guests? Soup does its loyal best, no matter what undignified conditions are imposed upon it. You don't catch steak hanging around when you're poor and sick, do you?"
Judith Martin (Miss Manners)
 

"I live on good soup, not on fine words."
Moliere
 

"Only the pure of heart can make good soup"
Beethoven
 

"Soup must be eaten boiling hot and coffee drunk piping hot."
Grimod de La Reynière
 

"An old-fashioned vegetable soup, without any enhancement, is a more powerful anticarcinogen than any known medicine."
James Duke M.D.(U.S.D.A.)
 

"The word soupe, is French, but extremely bourgeois; it is well to serve potage and not soupe."
‘Dictionnaire de Trévoux’ (18th Century)
 

"Beautiful soup, so rich and green
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!
Beautiful soup! Who cares for fish
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth of beautiful soup?"
Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice in Wonderland’
 

"It [soup] breathes reassurance, it offers consolation; after a weary day it promotes sociability...There is nothing like a bowl of hot soup, it's wisp of aromatic steam teasing the nostrils into quivering anticipation."
Louis P. DeGouy, Waldorf-Astoria chef), ‘The Soup Book’ (1949)
 

"Hot soup at table is very vulgar; it either leads to an unseemly mode of taking it, or keeps people waiting too long whilst it cools. Soup should be brought to table only moderately warm."
Charles Day, ‘Hints on Etiquette’ (1844)
 

"Soup and fish explain half the emotions of human life."
Sydney Smith
 

"It [soup] is to a dinner what a portico or a peristyle is to a building; that is to say, it is not only the first part of it, but it must be devised in such a manner as to set the tone of the whole banquet, in the same way as the overture of an opera announces the subject of the work."
Grimod de la Reynière

"Of all the items on the menu, soup is that which exacts the most delicate perfection and the strictest attention."
Auguste Escoffier
 

"Soup of the evening, beautiful..."
Lewis Carroll
 

"A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting."
Abraham Maslow
 

"Between soup and love, the first is better."
old Spanish saying
 

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."
H.L. Mencken
 

"I believe I once considerably scandalized her by declaring that clear soup was a more important factor in life than a clear conscience."
'Saki' (Hector Hugh Munro), Scottish writer (1870-1916)
 

"What an awful thing life is. It's like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless."
Gustave Flaubert
 

"Soup puts the heart at ease, calms down the violence of hunger, eliminates the tension of the day, and awakens and refines the appetite."
Auguste Escoffier
 

"First prepare the soup of your choice and pour it into a bowl. Then, take the bowl and quickly turn it upside down on the cookie tray. Lift the bowl and quickly turn it upside down on the cookie tray. Lift the bowl ever so gently so that the soup retains the shape of the bowl. Gently is the key word here. Then, with the knife cut the soup down the middle into halves, then quarters, and gently reassemble the soup into a cube. Some of the soup will run off onto the cookie tray. Lift this soup up by the corners and flod slowly into a cylindrical soup staff. Place the packet in your purse or inside coat pocket, and pack off to work."
Steve Martin
 

“And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.”
John Steinbeck, ‘East of Eden’
 

“Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad but bread is king.”
Louis Bromfield, American novelist  (1896-1956)

“Crackers, toasted or hard bread may be added a short time before the soup is wanted; but do not put in those libels on civilized cookery, called DUMPLINGS!  One might about as well eat, with the hope of digesting, a brick from the ruins of Babylon, as one of  the hard, heavy masses of boiled dough which usually pass under this name.”
Sarah Josepha Hale, 'The Good Housekeeper' (1839)