The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star.

'Monsieur,' Madame d'Arestel, Superior of the convent of the Visitation at Belley, once said to me more than fifty years ago, 'whenever you want to have a really good cup of chocolate, make it the day before, in a porcelain coffeepot, and let it set. The night's rest will concentrate it and give it a velvety quality which will make it better. Our good God cannot possibly take offense at this little refinement, since he himself is everything that is most perfect.'

In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight.

The dyspeptic and the drunkard do not know how to eat or drink.

The first thing we become convinced of is that man is organized so as to be far more sensible of pain than of pleasure.

Cooking is one of the oldest arts and one which has rendered us the most important service in civic life.

When I need a word and do not find it in French, I select it from other tongues, and the reader has either to understand or translate me. Such is my fate.