Little Jack Horner

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said, 'What a good boy am I?'

Nursery Rhyme

Jay Rayner on bloody steaks

"Asking for well done steak is not a simple matter of choice. It is a crime against taste and life itself... A well done steak is not a matter of choice. It's not a sweet affectation. It's a violation. Why would anyone want to take a good piece of meat and cook it until it has the texture of shoe leather, but none of the utility? Why would they want to put something in their mouth that tastes of nothing and gives you jaw cramps? Why would they want to rob it of the very thing that makes it itself?"

Rayner, J. (2010) The Happy Eater. Observer Food Monthly, Issue 115, 12 Dec, p.5.

John Lanchester on perfect pairs

"[L]amb and apricots are one of those combinations which exist together in a relation that is not just complementary but that seems to partake in a higher order of inevitability - a taste which exists in the mind of God. These combinations have the quality of a logical discovery: bacon and eggs, rice and soy sauce, Sauternes and foie gras, white truffles and pasta, steak-frites, strawberries and cream, lamb and garlic, Armagnac and prunes, port and Stilton, fish soup and rouille, chicken and mushrooms; to the committed explorer of the senses, the first experience of any of them will have an impact comparable with an astronomer's discovery of a new planet."

Lanchester, J. (1996) The Debt to Pleasure. London: Pan Macmillan.

A breakfast selection

"My wife and I tried two or three times in the last forty years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop." (Winston Churchill)

"To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day." (Somerset Maugham)

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast." (Oscar Wilde)

"He smiled rather too much. He smiled at breakfast, you know" (Charles Wheeler)

Cited in Schott, B. (2003) Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany. London: Bloomsbury.

A.A. Gill on gravadlax

"The Blonde had gravadlax. Everyone should have it once a year, it reminds you not to become blasé about smoked salmon. A plate of thick, slimy fish-flavoured pink flip-flop with an unpleasant sweet taste, it was everything gravadlax ever is, the very mordant soul of the fjords."

Gill, A.A. (2008). Table Talk: Sweet and Sour, Salt and Bitter. London: Phoenix.