If I wasn't an actress, I'd like to cook. I'm pretty obsessed by it. Rome was great in that sense, going to amazing cookery bookshops. No wonder their food is good because the quality and wide range of their produce is so good. It's not fair, really.

Polly Walker

My brother, a businessman, is the main cook in his home and my sister teaches cookery. Good food and good music were the mainstays of my childhood.

Ainsley Harriott

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Ambrose Bierce

The jambalaya of the American South owes a lot to the cuisines of the islands and western Africa, and it's my favorite of this type of one-pot cookery.

Andrew Zimmern

I don't feel my capabilities in cookery are as big as my desire - as with so many aspects of my life.

Anna Chancellor

I think cookery shows have become so sophisticated, and everyone's so marvellous at it, but there are people like me who aren't into the cooking malarkey, who still don't know how to boil an egg for three minutes.

Anton du Beke

Jellies are to cold cookery what consommes and stock are to hot. If anything, the former are perhaps more important: for a cold entree - however perfect it may be in itself - is nothing without its accompanying jelly.

Auguste Escoffier

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

Benjamin Franklin

I was always drawn to the blues. Alberta Hunter at the Cookery was a life-changing experience. I only wanted to get enriched as a performer as I got older, to have an audience which got older, too, and would come to see me when I'm 80.

Bonnie Raitt

I'm always up for music shows such as Jools Holland, but news more than anything, particularly Newsnight. And cookery: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Rick Stein - it's down to him that I cook fish so much - and the great food alchemist Heston Blumenthal.

Charles Hazlewood

I love cookery programmes.

Cilla Black

I like cookery shows much more than my husband, so I put them on the minute he goes away.

Claudia Winkleman

I have always read all the latest cookery books and magazines, from all over the world.

Delia Smith

Ten years ago, TV cookery shows were about a man or a woman following recipes. Now, it's all about journeys and campaigns and less about the actual chopping and dicing. That's what I'd like to do with magic.

Drummond Money-Coutts

Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.

Fannie Farmer

Kissing don't last: cookery do!

George Meredith

I don't do cookery shows to show off, I do it to encourage people. What's the point in going on TV and doing a recipe that no one can replicate?

Gino D'Acampo

I'm not much of a chef, so people keep buying me cookery books to broaden my culinary horizons, but I've not got far past shepherd's pie yet.

Guy Martin

I write cheap recipes for struggling families and single people, and have donated 800 copies of my newest cookery book to food banks and other good causes.

Jack Monroe

Even in my genre, cookery, just look who gets on the television. Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigel Slater. All very nice men. All white middleflclass men.

Jack Monroe

I learnt basic cookery by watching my mum.

Jane Asher