We Did Not Get Here First

Hannah-Jones, claims that ‘one of the primary reasons the colonies decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. Apparently, Hannah-Jones, who is seeking justice at the expense of historical truth, believes that Britain in 1776 was on the verge of abolishing slavery and the slave trade, and that prospect forced the colonists to break away from the empire. This project is creating a usable past with a vengeance.”
-Gordon Wood, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution (Oxford 2021) 111, 205n29

“The book is one of our great inventions as a species.”
-the character Jeremiah Reck from Snow by John Banville, set in Ireland during 1957

“I expected the worst and it was worse than I expected.”
-Peter Baker quoting Henry Adams in The New York Times (5 December 2020)

“Never buy a dead lobster.”
-Daisy Breaux (Mrs. C.C. Calhoun), Favorite Recipes of a Famous Hostess (Washington DC 1945) 40

“Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.”
-Oliver Herford

“There is no time like the pleasant.”
-also Oliver Herford

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.”
-William Hazlitt

“Jazz makes food and wine nervous.”

“People who wouldn’t eat a lamb kidney if they knew what it was will if they don’t.”
-Alan Koehler, The Madison Avenue Cook Book (New York 1962)


“Every joke is a tiny revolution.”
-George Orwell, “Funny, But Not Vulgar,” The Leader (28 July 1945)

“We need to get to Canada. Canada’s a civilized country.”
-Ethan Hawke as John Brown in “The Good Lord Bird,” Showtime, season 1 episode 4

Note: A common enough American sentiment as counting votes continued.

“Oysters are more beautiful than any religion…. There’s nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.”
-Saki, Chronicles of Clovis

Part of the instructions distributed by Grace Jones for furnishing her dressing room while on tour; a service of two dozen iced oysters: “Grace does her own shucking.”
- quoted by Dwight Garner in Garner’s Quotations (New York 2020)

“We’re only tourists in this life; only tourists but the view sure is nice. And we’re never going to go back home.”
-David Byrne, “Everybody’s Coming to my House” and “American Utopia”



“I was here and could do something. That’s the best reason anyone needs.”
-Robert Townshend circa 1781 as played by Nick Westrate on the television series “Turn: Washington’s Spies.”

“There is a demand for the best in life as we are confronted with so much mediocrity. In an age when everyone is deluged with homogeneous brands, we like to create the special. There is a real unfulfilled need and desire to experience it.”
-“Rules: About the Restaurant,” https://rules.co.uk/restaurant

“I did not come here to build walls. That is a strategy for fools.”
-John Beecham played by Tom Bateman on the British television series “Beecham House,” episode 1, aired 16 June 2020 on PBS in the United States


“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.”
-William Hazlitt

“Come summer, the British grow some wonderful tomatoes. Full of juice and not too sweet.”
-Nigel Slater, The 30-Minute Cook (London 1994)

“But sending out first drafts is the literary equivalent of walking around without pants. I don’t recommend it.”

-Jennifer Finney Boylan, “How I Learned to Fail Better,” The New York Times (4 September 2019)

“No amount of history written with hindsight can be anything like as good as a document never meant to be read.”

-David Hughes, “Introduction” to The Diary of a Country Parson (London 1992) xvi

On James Beard: “He liked Beef Wellington but he also liked chipped beef on toast.”

-Elizabeth Frederici (director), “James Beard: America’s First Foodie,” PBS Television (May 2017)



Citizen at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention: “What have you given us?

Franklin: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

“And in Europe, everybody is polysexual. America has these funny ideas about having to live on one side of the line or the other.”

-Eugene Wilson, describing Paris in the 1950s and Rome during the 60s in Milking the Moon (****) 122

“Many people find turkey boring, less interesting, than good ham or roast beef. Why? Perhaps because the bird has not been properly treated.”

-Eugene Walter, The Happy Table of Eugene Walter (Chapel Hill 2011) 112

“[T]here was a stern and dreadful peculiarity in this man, such as could not prove otherwise than pernicious to the happiness of those who should be drawn into too intimate a connection with him. He was not altogether human….

This is always true of those men who have surrendered themselves to an overruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle. When such begins to be the predicament, it is not cowardice, but wisdom, to avoid these victims. They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience. They will keep no friend, unless he make himself the mirror of his purpose; they will smite and slay you, and trample your dead corpse under foot, all the more readily, if you take the first step with them, and cannot take the second, and the third, and every other step of their terribly straight path….

And the higher and purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which godlike benevolence has been debased by all-devouring egotism.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (New York 1958; orig. publ. 1852) 93

“ ….violent sorrow seems a modern ecstasy…. ”

MacBeth Act IV Scene 3.

“John Thorne is a curious soul standing quite alone, the seventh and most distant cousin of that great gaggle that forms the world family of food writers, almost as if he had invented his own environment and had no need of company, much less his relatives. Because he stands well outside, he knows all the family secrets, both good and evil. There is an air about him of the benighted accountant who was fired for saying that Donald Trump didn’t really have any money.”

-Jim Harrison, The Raw and the Cooked (New York 2001 161-62


“Lard is even better than butter for frying vegetables, but must be kept at a high temperature or the vegetables will taste of it.”

-Virginia Randolph Trist, kitchen manuscript, beginning early nineteenth century, quoted in Marie Kimball, Thomas jefferson’s Cook Book (Charlottesville 1990; orig. publ. 1938)

“You can use butter if you want. But not marg. Don’t use that for anything.”
“Come summer, the British grow some wonderful tomatoes.”

-Nigel Slater, The 30-Minute Cook (London 1994) 71, 79

“Cooking is hard work. It was then,” during the eighteenth century, “and it still is now. What began as hard work became creative work.”

-Edna Lewis, “What is Southern?” Grantmaker in the Arts Reader Vol. 19, No. 3 (Fall 2008)

“I keep telling people that beer is more important than armies when it comes to understanding people.”-Alexei Vranich, Penn professor, quoted in Abigail Tucker, “The Beer Archeologist,” www.smithsonianmag.com (August 2011; accessed 12 November 2017)

“Dine light-heartedly and rely on Fortnum’s.”

-Tom Parker Bowles, The Cook Book (London 2016) 172

“Trade is one of the wonderful human inventions. It civilises and opens us up to the civilisation and the culture of other people. The essence of trade is the buyer’s belief that his money is buying reliable quality, to be repeated on each fresh deal at a fair price. And that essence is nowadays too often missing when I buy French wine.”

-Kevin Myers, From the Irish Times column ‘An Irishman’s Diary’ (Dublin 2000) 212

“Not much good my advice on choosing quinces. You have to buy what you can find, and be thankful.”

- Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book (London London 1982) 385

“It was typical of Dublin” during the second half of the nineteenth century “that the Fenians should have had many civilian sympathisers, even amongst the ‘respectable’ classes where there are always a number who enjoy creating a lounge bar sensation by talking red and acting blue. Moreover, the sympathy in America was fortified by the subscriptions of those of Irish blood whose indignation over British rule in Ireland continues to be in inverse proportion to their experience of it.”

-John O’Donovan, Life by the Liffey: A Kaleidoscope of Dubliners (Dublin 1986) 74-75

“I like Italian food and English beer…. ”

-‘Isabelle,’ in the Classic Stage Company production (2017) of The Liar by Corneille (original version first performed 1644)

“Food redolent of the soil and the sea retains something valuable that is lost in freezing, canning and processing generally-what has been called ‘the subtle elements of freshness.’ So, however sophisticated and internationally-minded we become in the affairs of the kitchen, let us be careful to preserve those regional dishes that have been handed down by rule-of-thumb for countless generations.”

-F. Marion McNeill, “Preface” to Margaret Stout, Cookery For Northern Wives (Lerwick 1965) xi

“’Native food for native folk’ should be heard more often, especially when it is remembered that as a rule it is cheapest and generally best.”

-Margaret Stout, Cookery For Northern Wives (Lerwick 1925) xv    

“Cheese makes a lousy accompaniment for wine. A decent cheese will mask the taste of any wine.” (emphasis in original)

-Roxy Beaujolais, Home From the Inn Contented (London 1995) 119

“Some cookery books insist on giving cooking times for meat: I find this absurd and misleading.”

-Nicolas Freeling, The Cook Book (Jaffrey, NH 1970) 210

“And don’t underestimate bay leaves. The bay tree thrives strangely in a cold climate and offers spice-like, almost tropical indigeneity yet generations of northern cooks have relegated its leaves to ritual half-life in the bouquet garni. It deserves better treatment; bay is one of the great flavourings.”

“Britain has a greater diversity of smoked fish than any other country and, in a modest way these provide an island counterpart to the charcuterie of France.”

-Victor Gordon, The English Cookbook (London 1985) 92, 37

It “is a fact adequately demonstrated… that except in a relatively small number of cases homosexuality is not a fixed category but a tendency which runs through the whole population of every country…. It is impossible to say that so many human beings are homosexual, so many heterosexual, so many bi-sexual, or to pigeon-hole men according to these fluid classifications. Of course, there are those to whom these broad terms must be used but they can never be final or mutually exclusive. The great friendships of the world have given it almost as much inspiration as the great loves and though the passion in them may be buried obscurely, unrealized and not physically expressed, it must exist. Only Caliban can claim immunity from all feeling for his own kind and if there could exist a man wholly, in every fibre and thought, in every moment and mood, one hundred per cent heterosexual he would be no better than an animal. If another could be integrally and to the same degree homosexual he would be insane. Fortunately there is no black or white in nature and it is only cowards and morons who are afraid to face this fact.”

-Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Verdict of You All (London 1955) 152

“Only an insensitive cook would repeat a recipe without attempting to improve it.”

-Richard J. Hooker, The Book of Chowder (Boston 1978) 11

“English food is often most unjustly reviled, but only by those who have never sampled its masterpieces.”

-Leslie Blanch, Round the World in Eighty Dishes (London 1956) 32

“Extremely fresh fish has a fragrance that sometimes reminds me of cucumbers.”

-Jasper White, Fifty Chowders (Boston 2000) 29

“I dare affirm that Cookery in England, when well done, is superior to that of any country in the world.”

-Louis Eustache Ude, The French Cook (London 1813) xxii

“Only an insensitive cook would repeat a recipe without attempting to improve it.”

-Richard J. Hooker, The Book of Chowder (Boston 1978) 11

“What would Theodora do?”

-Donal Skehane on his desire to cook like Theodora FitzGibbon, The Pleasures of the Table (Dublin 2014) xvii

“The rising tide has lifted all yachts but not all boats.”

-Mark Shields, “PBS Newshour” (31 October 2014)

“A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. They are great softeners of temper and promoters of domestic harmony.”

-William Cobbett

“A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn’t care to drink with--even if he drank.”

-H. L. Mencken

“‘Man’, said Mr. Peregrine Touchwood, ‘is a cooking animal.’”

-Christian Isobel Johnstone writing as ‘Meg Dods,’ The Cook and Housewife’s Manual (Edinburgh 1829)

“Most people’s hearts sink at the mention of cottage pie. It can be delicious and it is pretentious for a cookery writer to infer that remains do not exist and should be thrown away…. You can make an even better cottage pie by using raw chopped steak instead of cold meat--but that does not help with the problem of finishing up remains.”

-Robin McDouall, Robin McDouall’s Cookery Book (London 1963) 139-40
Editor’s note: Cottage pie is shepherds’ pie made with beef instead of lamb.

“The only way to find out more was to read more; the only way to make sense of it all was to write it down, and then to try to check, prove, or modify.”

-Annette Hope, A Caledonian Feast (Edinburgh 1987)

“Britain is a pie society.”

-Tom Bridge, Pie Society (Lancaster, England 2010) back flyleaf

“I have often heard the French laugh at our habit of eating redcurrant jelly with lamb, quite forgetting their own similar combinations of pork with prunes or duck with orange. I suppose it is a sign of insecurity, of the closed mind.”

-Jane Grigson, English Food (London 1979) 152

In Curiosities of London Life; or, Phases Physiological and Social of the Great Metropolis , Charles Manby Smith writes in 1853 of savory pie’s “present universal estimation among all civilized eaters.”

“I strongly advise any of my readers who write to England for their stores, not to forget to ask for a little bottle of American “ Tabasco ” or quintessence of cayenne, sold by Messrs. Jackson and Co., Piccadilly, priced half a crown: each bottle is furnished with a patent stopper to enable you to shake out a drop at a time; two drops in each basin of soup is generally found enough, and the flavour is very good, quite superseding chill-vinegar for this purpose.”

-Colonel Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert writing as ‘Wyvern,’ Culinary Jottings for Madras (Calcutta 1891)

“But you must know that English cooking-- good English cooking, not the cooking one gets in second-class hotels or in restaurants--is much appreciated by gourmets on the continent, and I believe I am correct in saying that a special expedition was made to London in the early eighteen hundreds, and a report sent back to France of the wonders of the English puddings. ‘We have nothing like that in France,’ they wrote. ‘It is worth making a journey to London just to taste the varieties and excellencies of the English puddings.’”

-Agatha Christie, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (London 1960) 52

“The Elizabeth David whom I knew slightly towards the end of her life was a great hater--she was embittered, misanthropic, self-pitying, pretty graceless. Having once been paid a blurting, though well-meant, compliment by a friend of mine, she turned to me and sneered: ‘What a remarkably stupid young woman--I suppose you know a lot of people like that.’”

-Jonathan Meade, Incest and Morris Dancing (London 2002) 59

“As soon as you heard his voice you had to stop and listen.”

-John Waters on Vincent Price

A voice of sanity: “[I]t is quite unnecessary to peel mushrooms.”

-Richard Boston, Beer and Skittles (London 1976) 120

“He struck me as one of those warped birds who have never recovered from an unhappy childhood and a miserable school life.”

-P. G. Wodehouse on George Orwell, whom he liked.

“I like stews, where you throw in all the ingredients and then walk away and watch ‘Game of Thrones.’”

-Elizabeth Gilbert, quoted in Emma Allen, “The Reincarnation,” The New Yorker (23 July 2012)

“Madeira must have been invented to drink with it, cheese straws to be eaten with it, and gold plates to serve it on.”

-Compton Mackenzie on turtle soup in Pat Davis (ed.), Oysters and Champagne (London 1955)

“I like to eat my meat in good company, Sir.”
“So do I, and the best company for meat is bread. A sandwich is better company than a fool.”

-Anon., quoted in Mrs. C. F. Leyel & Miss Olga Hartley, The Gentle Art of Cookery (London 1970; orig. publ. 1925) 356

“I was thirty-four years old when I discovered I’d been using the wrong part of the lemon my whole life. Lemon juice is fine to brighten a drink or a piece of fish with a shot of acidity, but everything that is floral and piquant about lemons is found in the zest--the grated peel, which contains the aromatic oil.

Virtually any dish that calls for lemon juice can be made better by adding lemon juice and zest.”

- Rowan Jacobsen, The Geography of Oysters (New York 2007) 235-36

“Short cooking time is the secret for keeping oysters tender and flavourful. Over-cooking toughens an oyster. Don’t wait for the edges to curl.”

“As to what to drink with oysters--well, if it’s a meal of oysters, then stout.”

-Henry Smith, The Master Book of Fish (London 194?, 135)

“Theodora FitzGibbon, though not so well known as Elizabeth David, is surely one of the best writers on food we have.”

-Ronald Johnson, The American Table (Weston CT 2000, 43)

“From a library of 200 cook books, this is the book I normally check first when I get an inkle. Ronald Johnson is a God Damned Joy.”

-‘jhacking’ reviews The American Table at www.amazon.com (22 June 1999)

“The English, as befits their culinary expertise and raw materials, specialized in suet pastry dumplings, from whence grew their acknowledged skill as pastry and cake makers.”

-Elizabeth Luard, the Old World Kitchen (New York 1987) 166

“It had to happen, the return to cooking. People don’t just throw away an entire food culture after centuries.”

-Darina Allen, quoted in Julia Moskin, “Teaching the Irish (and Others) to Love
Irish Food,” The New York Times, 31 March 2010

“North American cookery continued to develop under strong English influence throughout the eighteenth century.”

-C. Anne Wilson, The Book of Marmalade (Totnes, Devon 1985) 117

“And although New England isn’t of any great size she can claim more dishes to her credit than any other region in the United States.”

-Clementine Paddleford, the great American Cookbook (orig. New York 1960; 2011 Rizzoli reissue)

“If friends come into the kitchen and offer their help and company to the cook, they tend to increase her dismay and panic. They get in the way. They don’t understand what she expects them to do. They stand with their backs to the cutlery drawer, or lean against the oven. They don’t know where the spoons, the sugar, the garlic are. Their embarrassed ineptitude worries her every bit as much as the eventual outcome of her challenging and problematical dish.”

-Caroline Blackwood & Anna Haycraft, Darling You Shouldn’t Have Gone To So Much Trouble (London 1980)

“John Bull embodied a contradiction, deploring the overspicing that masked the natural flavors of meat, but admitting to a penchant for the strong spices and exotic flavors of India.”

-Marc Lafrance and Yvon Desloges, “Clubs, Cafes and Taverns: John Bull in Canada, 1760-1820,” in A Taste of History: The Origins of Quebec’s Gastronomy (Quebec 1989)

“Certain guesses o’ yours are sure to leave-back the pig tails without touching them. When the guesses leave, stuff the damn pig tail in your mouth and feel sorry for them!”

Austin Clarke discussing the inclusion of salted pigtails in pea soup, from Pig Tails ‘n Breadfruit (New York 1999) 172

“Just like your grandparents, the rum spirit gets even more character and complexity with age. Except unlike your grandparents, the rum is aged in charred oak barrels.”

From the Coruba rum website . Coruba itself was established in 1889 as “Companies Rum Basil.”

“I hate cloves in most things and think they ruin bread sauce.”

-Robin McDouall, Clubland Cooking , (London 1974, 103)

“It is commonly said, even by the English themselves, that English cooking is the worst in the world. It is supposed to be not merely incompetent, but also imitative…. Now that simply is not true.... ”

-George Orwell, “In Defence of English Food,” London Evening Standard , (15 December 1945)

“One of the most surprising items on the modern Thanksgiving menu is lasagna --and it isn’t just on the tables of Italian Americans. Recent immigrants from Eritrea, Bosnia, Trinidad and India all mentioned that lasagna was a favorite part of their Thanksgiving meal.... In recent decades, lasagna has become so integrated into the landscape of American food that newcomers perceive it as American--and therefore as suitable for Thanksgiving as turkey and cranberry sauce.”

-Kathleen Curtin & Sandra L. Oliver, Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and history from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie (New York 2005) 58

“Go back a century or two to Eliza Acton and Hannah Glasse and you are reading the writings of two Elizabeth Davids of an earlier age. Full of seasonal herbs, warmed with spices and alcohol, they express a sensual but practical appreciation of food and how to prepare it. Go back further still and it is the same story.”

-Jenny Baker (1996)

“I am always surprised to hear British cooking maligned by Americans; so many of our best dishes, especially in the South, are absolutely English.”

-John Martin Taylor (1992)

“I like lost causes.”

-Jane Garmey, quoted in The New York Times “Design” supplement (8 April 2010), on having written two cookbooks about British food.

"Freshwater crayfish, which are common in all our waters, are surprisingly largely ignored in this country.”

-MacDonald Hastings and Carole Walsh, Wheeler’s Fish Cookery Book (London 1974)

“We don’t have a signature dish.”

-Maurice Fells, author of The Bristol Year , on Bristolian food: Interview by Sophie Woodcock on “Bristolian bridge cake to return", BBC Bristol, 21 April 2009

[Our] responsiveness to the food of other nations can be traced back for three centuries and more. For better or worse, it marks English food apart from the cooking of any other country in Europe. When the combinations and adoptions are made by a master, the results are splendid but success in such matters is not as easy as we seem to think it is.... In lesser hands it can turn to pretentiousness or a desperate novelty that makes one long for a boiled egg and toast.

-Jane Grigson, The Observer Guide to British Cookery (London 1984) 16

“If I had to show a foreigner one English city and one only, to give him a balanced idea of English architecture, I should take him… to Bristol, which has developed in all directions, and where nearly everything has happened.”

-Sir John Summerson, quoted in Andrew Foyle, Pevsner Architecture Guides: Bristol (London 2004)

"With such an honourable history, it is time to revive the basic English brown and white fricassees."

-Gilly Lehmann, "Olios and Fricassees," in Eileen White (ed.), The English Kitchen 75 (Totnes, Devon 2007)

“I... have a problem with the English fanaticism of Mediterranean food. I love Mediterranean food in the Mediterranean, but this isn’t the Mediterranean. We have short seasons, so when they come to an end, rather than lamenting that fact, we should look forward to them coming around again, next year. I think we’re in denial of what we’ve got, which is all good.”

-Fergus Henderson interviewed by Soraya Kishtwari for “Real Food Pioneer,” The Times (London)

“It’s my favorite restaurant in the world.”

-Anthony Bourdain on Fergus Henderson’s restaurant, St. John, in Clerkenwell, London (1984)

“Elizabeth David’s message had contributed towards a rejection of England’s own culture, the Anglo-Saxon one, in a way which few Europeans would contemplate in relation to their own.”

-Lisa Chaney, Elizabeth David (London 1998) xxiv

“A wise traveler never despises his own country.”

-William Hazlitt

“Hix brings us the decade’s second defining culinary feature, the one that will have the longest legacy: the rediscovery of British food. Partly this was about reworking forgotten recipes, as Hix demonstrates so charmingly at his eponymous restaurant in London’s Soho.

-Jasper Gerard, “The restaurant highlights of the Noughties,” The Telegraph (11 December 2009)

“The pleasures of the table in this happy nation may be put in the same rank as the ordinary, everyone is accustomed to good eating. They consist chiefly of a variety of good puddings, Golden Pippens, which is an excellent kind of apple, delicious green oysters and roast beef, which is the favourite dish as well at the king’s table as at a tradesman’s… and this may be said to be (as it were) the emblem of the prosperity and plenty of the English.”

-M. Muralt, Letters Describing the Characters and Customs of the English and French Nations (London 1726)

“The English have always been sturdy individualists with a loathing for rigid rules, and their cooks have never worried about adding a bit of this and that to any recipe. In both printed and handwritten recipe books there has been a long tradition of footnotes indicating that the reader may do as she pleases when judging texture or colour, or adding flavouring or garnishing.”

-Mary Norwak, English Puddings (1981)

“By 1928 I had struck a rich line of research. We had the finest cookery in the world, but it had nearly been lost by neglect; a whole lifetime would not be sufficient for one person to rediscover it.”

-Florence White, author of Good Things in England , quoted by Colin Spencer

“Dry the beef in paper towels: it will not brown if it is damp.”

-Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck and Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (New York 2009; orig. publ. 1961)

“There was a time when the British were renowned for their good living, for splendid native dishes and for their uninhibited enjoyment of fine food and drink.”

-Alexander Glen, “Forward” to Lizzie Boyd (ed.), British Food (Woodstock, NY 1979)

"I am not out to change the world with my food. I am not out to reinvent the wheel. I'm only here to make people happy. And whatever it takes to do that is my goal. I also believe that just because something is one hundred years old or twenty-three years old doesn't mean it isn't good any more."

-Frank Brigsten, quoted in L. E. Elie, "Ode to Pecan Pie," Oxford American No. 65 (Summer 2009)