Ambrose Bierce Quotes About Cooking
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Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
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TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
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FRYING-PAN, n. One part of the penal apparatus employed in that punitive institution, a woman's kitchen. The frying-pan was invented by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva. Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.
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Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
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EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition. 'I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,' said Brillat-Savarin, beginning an anecdote. 'What!' interrupted Rochebriant; 'eating dinner in a drawing-room?' 'I must beg you to observe, monsieur,' explained the great gastronome, 'that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I had dined an hour before.'
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SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its contents, madam.
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RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
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DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.
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HASH: There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is.
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Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
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A chop is a piece of leather skillfully attached to a bone and administered to the patients at restaurants.
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EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
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FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs
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Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
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Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
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PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.
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TABLE D'HOTE, n. A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.
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HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
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TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.
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PIE, n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.
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CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.
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TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.
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MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.
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Rhubarb: essence of stomach ache.
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Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
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PIG, n. An animal ("Porcus omnivorus") closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
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Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.
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WINE, n.Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
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