M. F. K. Fisher - Serve it forth (1937)

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Central heating, French rubber goods, and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man's ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful.

M. F. K. Fisher
A potato is a poor thing, poorly treated. More often than not it is cooked in so unthinking and ignorant a manner as to make one feel that it has never before been encountered in the kitchen.

M. F. K. Fisher
Too few of us, perhaps, feel that the breaking of bread, the sharing of salt, the common dipping into one bowl, mean more than satisfaction of a need. We make such primal things as casual as tunes heard over a radio, forgetting the mystery and strength in both.

M. F. K. Fisher
Talleyrand said that two things are essential in life: to give good dinners and to keep on fair terms with women. As the years pass and fires cool, it can become unimportant to stay always on fair terms either with women or one's fellows, but a wide and sensitive appreciation of fine flavours can still abide with us, to warm our hearts.

M. F. K. Fisher
I prefer not to have among my guests two people or more, of any sex, who are in the first wild tremours of love. It is better to invite them after their new passion has settled, has solidified into a quieter reciprocity of emotions. (It is also a waste of good food, to serve it to new lovers.)

M. F. K. Fisher
France eats more consciously, more intelligently, than any other nation.

M. F. K. Fisher
Sharing our meals should be a joyful and a trustful act, rather than the cursory fulfillment of our social obligations.

M. F. K. Fisher
Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat — and drink! — with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.

M. F. K. Fisher
In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavor. We are as a nation taste-blind.

M. F. K. Fisher
We sink too easily into stupid and overfed sensuality, our bodies thickening even more quickly than our minds.

M. F. K. Fisher
Once at least in the life of every human, whether he be brute or trembling daffodil, comes a moment of complete gastronomic satisfaction.

M. F. K. Fisher