Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse.
 G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World (1910). copy citation

Context

“Nobody says, «This washerwoman rips up the left leg of my pyjamas; now if there is one thing I insist on it is the right leg ripped up.» The ideal washing is simply to send a thing back washed. But it is by no means true that the ideal cooking is simply to send a thing back cooked. Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse. I know a man, not otherwise dainty, who cannot touch common sausages unless they are almost burned to a coal. He wants his sausages fried to rags, yet he does not insist on his shirts being boiled to rags.” source

Meaning and analysis

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