Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all

Written by Harriet Van Horne 1920–1998 · American newspaper columnist and television critic
Verified In copyright

Van Horne opened a Vogue article titled ‘Not for Jiffy Cooks’ with this sentence on 15 October 1956. Quote Investigator traced it to that issue and verified the citation on microfilm ↗, and found no earlier appearance. It is not Julia Child’s line, though that is where the internet usually files it.

Last verified 14 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all” Harriet Van Horne, “Not for Jiffy Cooks,” Vogue, 15 October 1956, p. 122. Not Julia Child. Verified by Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Condé Nast (publisher of Vogue) and the estate of Harriet Van Horne). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Harriet Van Horne — American newspaper columnist, radio & television critic. Theme: "Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

A television critic’s recipe column

Source
‘Not for Jiffy Cooks’, by Harriet Van Horne
Published in
Vogue, 15 October 1956, p. 122, col. 1 (Condé Nast, New York)
Subtitled
‘Six recipes, simple, honest, and sometimes unconventional’
Verdict
Verified — Van Horne’s own opening line

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. This, then, is not a document for jiffy cooks. Nor for those devotees of those premixed, prewhipped, pre-stewed foods that crowd the grocer's shelf. Opening of ‘Not for Jiffy Cooks’, Vogue, 15 October 1956

Van Horne wrote it with a full stop — ‘Cooking is like love. It should be…’ The version in wide circulation substitutes an em dash (‘Cooking is like love — it should be…’), which is how the 2002 and 2007 printings below both render it.

Quote Investigator — the full citation trail, 1956 to 2011

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ gives the earliest evidence as ‘1956 October 15, Vogue, Not for Jiffy Cooks by Harriet Van Horne, Start Page 122, Quote Page 122, Column 1, Conde Nast Publications, New York’, marked ‘Verified on microfilm’. The 1956 microfilm is not reachable from this session, so the primary citation here rests on QI’s verification, not on our own reading of the page.
  • QI’s conclusion is unambiguous: ‘evidence indicates that Harriet Van Horne created this saying and published it by 1956’, and ‘the words were assigned to Julia Child at a much later date perhaps because she was a prominent chef.’
  • Van Horne was a newspaper columnist and radio and television critic ↗ at the New York World-Telegram and later the New York Post — not a food writer, which is part of why the line drifted to a chef.
In copyright

First published in Vogue on 15 October 1956 — after 1930, so it remains under United States copyright. The sentence is reproduced here as a short excerpt for identification, verification and criticism, not as a licence to reprint the article.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who it gets handed to instead

This is one of the most reliably mis-credited lines in food writing. Quote Investigator documents two wrong names ↗, one printing that gives up and calls it anonymous, and one knowing adaptation.

Julia Child Misattributed

The usual modern credit, and the reason most people meet the line at all. QI concludes the words ‘were assigned to Julia Child at a much later date perhaps because she was a prominent chef’ — it records a 2011 reader finding web pages crediting both Child and Van Horne, with no source offered for Child.

Sydney Smith Misattributed

Nick Stellino’s Glorious Italian Cooking (Penguin, 2002), p. 39, printed the line in its em-dash form over the name SYDNEY SMITH — the English cleric and wit who died in 1845, more than a century before Van Horne wrote it.

‘Graffiti on a kitchen wall’ Anonymous

A 2007 Post and Courier review of a new edition of The Silver Palate Cookbook noted the book carried the line ‘credited simply as graffiti on a kitchen wall’ — an honest shrug rather than a false credit, but it is how the attribution got lost.

Margaret and Tom Grade Adaptation

Los Angeles Magazine reported in February 1998 that the proprietors of a Californian lodge had reworked the adage for their dining room as ‘DINING OUT IS LIKE LOVE; IT SHOULD BE ENTERED INTO WITH ABANDON OR NOT AT ALL’ — knowingly adapted, and credited to nobody.

The line is Harriet Van Horne’s, written to open a Vogue recipe article on 15 October 1956, and no earlier use has been found ↗.

Context

Written against convenience food

The sentence is not a greeting-card sentiment — it is the opening salvo of an argument. Van Horne follows it immediately with ‘This, then, is not a document for jiffy cooks’, and then with a swipe at ‘premixed, prewhipped, pre-stewed foods that crowd the grocer’s shelf’. In 1956, at the high tide of American convenience food, ‘abandon’ was a position: cook properly or order in, but do not half-do it from a box.

This, then, is not a document for jiffy cooks.

Why a TV critic was writing recipes

Van Horne’s day job was television. She reviewed it for the New York World-Telegram and the New York Post, sat on the Peabody Awards jury from 1958 to 1967, covered the 1960 Nixon–Kennedy debates as a TV critic, and was well enough disliked by Nixon to make his master list of political opponents. The best-known thing she ever wrote is a sentence about cooking, published under a subtitle promising ‘six recipes, simple, honest, and sometimes unconventional’.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator — Cooking Is Like Lovequoteinvestigator.com

The full investigation: the 1956 Vogue citation verified on microfilm, plus every later misattribution.
Wikipedia — Harriet Van Horneen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (1920–1998) and her career as a syndicated columnist and television critic.
Wikipedia — Vogue (magazine)en.wikipedia.org

The Condé Nast magazine the piece ran in, for the 1956 publishing context.
Wikipedia — Julia Childen.wikipedia.org

The chef the line is usually handed to — who had not yet published a cookbook in 1956.
Wikipedia — Sydney Smithen.wikipedia.org

The English wit (1771–1845) credited by a 2002 cookbook, over a century before the line existed.

The author

About Harriet Van Horne

Harriet Van Horne

1920–1998 · American newspaper columnist, radio & television critic

Harriet Van Horne (1920–1998) was born in Syracuse, New York, graduated from the University of Rochester in 1940, and spent her career reviewing radio and television — first for the New York World-Telegram, later as a syndicated columnist in the New York Post. She was a Peabody Awards juror, covered the 1960 Nixon–Kennedy debates, and earned a place on Nixon’s list of political opponents. One colleague described her as ‘a dainty, blue-eyed blonde with a sweet-voiced feminine manner — and a harpoon in her typewriter.’

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Van Horne, Harriet. “Not for Jiffy Cooks.” Vogue, 15 October 1956, 122. Earliest documented appearance per Quote Investigator, verified on microfilm.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all’?” Last verified 14 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/cooking-is-like-love-it-should-be-entered-into-with-abandon/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied