Quote Of The Day By Jacques Pépin: 'You May Be Very Creative And Imaginative In The Kitchen, But You Cannot...'

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Jacques Pépin has been called the chef's chef and few people in the world can match his decades of culinary skill and experience. Born in 1935 in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, Pépin started work in professional kitchens in 1948, aged just 13, and went on to cook for heads of state including President Charles de Gaulle, as well as U.S. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama. He turned down a chance to cook for President Kennedy, famously cooked on television alongside Julia Child, and worked at more than 100 restaurants in his career. It's safe to say Pépin knows cooking and understands the culinary world.

In his early days, Pépin was working 14-hour days for no pay. He slept above the restaurant and learned by observing, not by being taught. "When I was an apprentice we stole the trade, we didn't learn it," he told the Columbia Journal of American Studies. He explained that the chef never told the apprentices anything. They had to pick up skills from constant observation and repetition. He likened it to learning by osmosis.

The skills he's famous for today were hard won, but have allowed him to share many culinary tips with younger cooks so they don't need to struggle as much as he did. When asked by CBS News whether his true passion was food or teaching, he said, "I think teaching about food. I like to explain, break it down." This passion for food and sharing his knowledge about it is why Jacques Pépin is bringing us today's quote of the day.

"You may be very creative and imaginative in the kitchen, but you cannot take advantage of those qualities if you don't know the basics." 

Pépin said this in the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of his book "Jacques Pépin Complete Techniques." Published in 2026, Pépin's book is an updated version of "La Technique," which was first published in 1976. While you could consider it a cookbook, as it contains over 160 recipes, it's more an instructional guide to all aspects of cooking, and features more than 600 techniques.

The basics Pépin is talking about include poaching an egg, shelling fava beans, and even sharpening knives. Many of the skills Pépin presented are techniques cookbook authors often take for granted, even though they can be barriers for new cooks. The book also features more than 1,000 photographs so home cooks can follow each process step by step. These might be preparing a workspace, holding a knife correctly, or stuffing a chicken, as well as how to master other techniques that can be difficult to follow during a live demonstration.

Pépin understood that home cooks who want to learn cooking techniques want to learn them all. "I used to give classes a bit all over the country, and I would never have put in a book how to peel a carrot," Pepin told CBS News. "Except that I would peel a carrot and a class will say, 'Oh, that's how you peel a carrot?' I say, 'Yes.' I said, 'Maybe I'll put that in the book, too!'"

Much of Pépin's culinary career as an instructor has focused on the basics. His early years in French kitchens were far less glamorous than the image many people have of restaurants today. His work focused on repetition. Chopping, peeling, preparing the basic elements that a more skilled chef would then use to create dishes. Creativity was something that came later. Pépin once worked on a team of 48 chefs at a restaurant famous for its lobster soufflé. "I think any one of us could have done that lobster soufflé. No one would have known who had done it," he told CBS News. Now home cooks can use his techniques to make his own famous soufflé recipe.

The foundation mattered most because it gave everyone in the kitchen the skill set they needed before developing more advanced techniques. That's what has been at the core of Pépin's teaching over the years and what he meant when he said you can't take advantage of unique ideas if you don't have the basics down.

Because Pépin spent years working as an ordinary chef before becoming famous, he appreciated doing things simply and efficiently. He approached everything this way, not just cooking. He once opened a small French bistro in Connecticut for under $50,000 to prove a restaurant didn't need to be a big, elaborate affair. "I put down the quarry tile on the floor, my wife painted the walls," he told the Columbia Journal of American Studies. They even bought stoves from a school that was throwing old ones away and refurbished them. For Pépin, both cooking and running a restaurant began with practical fundamentals rather than elaborate extras. The glitz and glamor need to be earned.

"I have painted a bit, here and there, for years. While I occasionally come up with what I think is a great idea for a picture, my hands are really good enough to express what I have in my head." — "Jacques Pépin Complete Techniques"

"Cooking is the art of recovery or adjustment or compensation." — 2022 exclusive interview with Tasting Table

"Mastering the basics allows you to try out new ideas, to remedy potentially catastrophic calculations, and to tackle any kind of recipe because you will comprehend the mechanics behind it." — "Jacques Pépin Complete Techniques"

"A recipe is a teaching tool, a guide, a point of departure. You have to follow it exactly the first time you make the dish. But as you make it again and again, you will change it, you will massage it to fit your own taste, your own sense of aesthetic." — 2016 PBS NewsHour interview

"Food by definition is about sharing. The sharing of knowledge is like the sharing of food." — 2002 KQED interview

"Whether it is in painting, in cooking, in cabinet making or any other craft, you have to become a good technician and repeat and repeat until you reach the point where you have so internalized those skills that they become an unconscious part of you." — Columbia Journal of American Studies interview