In all professions without doubt, but certainly in cooking one is a student all his life.
Success is the sum of a lot of small things done correctly.
As far as cuisine is concerned one must read everything, see everything, hear everything, try everything, observe everything, in order to retain in the end, just a little bit.
If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.
The duty of a good Cuisinier is to transmit to the next generation everything he has learned and experienced.
There are many people who claim to be good cooks; just as there are many people who, after having repainted the garden gate take themselves to be painters.
Every morning the cuisinier must start again at zero, with nothing on the stove. That is what real cuisine is all about.
Perfection is lots of little things done well.
I like to start off my day with a glass of champagne...I like to wind it up with a glass of champagne, too. To be frank, I also like a glass or two in between. It may not be the universal medicine for every disease, as my friends in Reims and Epernay so often tell me, but it does you less harm than any other liquid.
I'm not hard to please, I'm content with the very best.
Place a lump of fresh butter in a pan or egg dish and let it melt - that is, just enough for it to spread, and never, of course, to crackle or sit; open a very fresh egg onto a small plate or saucer and slide it carefully into the pan; cook it on heat so low that the white barely turns creamy, and the yolk becomes hot but remains liquid; in a separate saucepan, melt another lump of fresh butter; remove the egg onto a lightly heated serving plate; salt it and pepper it, then very gently pour this fresh, warm butter over it
A Bearnaise sauce is simply an egg yolk, a shallot, a little tarragon vinegar, and butter, but it takes years of practice for the result to be perfect.
Cooking is for capturing the taste of the food and then enhancing it, as a composer may take a theme and then delight us with his variations.
A good apprentice cook must be as polite with the dishwasher as with the chef.
Before judging a thin man, one must get some information. Perhaps he was once fat.
In the orchestra of a great kitchen, the sauce chef is a soloist.
A good meal must be as harmonious as a symphony and as well-constructed as a Norman cathedral.
If he is thin, I will probably dine poorly. If he is both thin and sad, the only hope is in flight.
Cuisine is not invariable like a Codex formula. But one must guard against tampering with the essential bases.
