Quote Of The Day By Vincent Price: 'The Finest Food, Like The Best In Every Art, Is Simply...'

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Actor Vincent Price was often called the Master of the Macabre in the media because of his decades-long career in horror films. His first film role was in 1938, but he became famous for his horror work through the 1950s and beyond in titles like "The House of Wax," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Fly." Modern audiences are more likely to know him from one of his later roles, such as the inventor in "Edward Scissorhands" or as the narrator in Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.

Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and though acting was how the world knew him, food was in his blood. His father owned a candy company, and his grandfather invented the first commercial cream of tartar-based baking powder. 

Vincent's wife, Mary Grant, was the daughter of a sea captain who spent her childhood between Shanghai, China, and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She worked as a costume designer and met Vincent Price on the set of "Up in Central Park" in 1948; they married soon afterward, and remained together for nearly three decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, Price scaled back his acting and devoted much of his spare time to passions including fine art and cooking. He and Mary sold fine art, wallpaper, and pottery through Sears, Roebuck and Company, but also penned several cookbooks, including "A Treasury of Great Recipes," which was perhaps the first ever celebrity cookbook.

Mary and Vincent enjoyed a lifestyle that let them travel and experience foods in cities around the world. They wrote passionately about food, where it was made, and the people who made it, while also trying to make everything they shared accessible to their readers. That passion and desire are why Vincent and Mary Price are the source of today's quote of the day.

"The finest food, like the best in every art, is simply a matter of excellence of preparation, imagination, and performance." 

This quote is credited to Vincent and Mary Price in the introduction to their 1965 book, "A Treasury of Great Recipes." The husband-and-wife duo shared writing duties and sometimes even switched voices mid-sentence, so we'll attribute the quote and the sentiment to each of them.

Both Vincent and Mary were travelers and foodies. Their book is a culinary travelogue of their adventures together across multiple continents. While it contains many recipes, often broken down by city where the couple experienced the dish for the first time, it also guides readers through the establishments where the food was served and introduces them to the chefs who cooked it. For example, Vincent loved the asparagus Milanese served at Sardi's in New York, eaten while working on Broadway. The book also details the history and aesthetics of numerous restaurants where the Prices dined. There are copies of menus, sometimes handwritten, from many of them. Each recipe includes its own short introduction. Whether the Prices explained where the fish was sourced at a hotel restaurant where they learned the recipe, or simply shared why they liked a dish so much, everything has a personal touch. Price even includes a recipe for his favorite way to make iced tea, which included mint, jasmine, cinnamon, and cloves.

The couple had an appreciation for cooking as an art form. And, like other art forms, they wanted cooking to be shared with others who could enjoy it. They presented recipes as something to be admired and reproduced for wider enjoyment, and their book was an attempt to offer readers the tools to achieve that excellence of preparation, imagination, and performance.

When Vincent Price started acting, he was in school studying art history. Later, he and Mary Price partnered with Sears, Roebuck and Company on The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art, which sold original art sourced by the couple through Sears stores. "Price saw this venture as a part of his efforts to bring art to people in their daily lives," according to the Library of Congress. This very much reflects the Prices' own words in their cookbook. The recipes that so enamored them from around the world were things they wanted to bring back and share with others, first with friends they recreated the recipes for and then with readers of the book.

"Somehow it has gotten around that we are collectors of everything, all the arts, folk art, decorative art, fine art, and the art of enjoying food — and preparing it," the Prices state in the book's introduction. For them, art and food were two sides of the same coin. They were expressions of human creativity and imagination. It was clear Vincent Price and his wife appreciated both visual art and food so much that they felt others would benefit from experiencing those things for themselves.

The book's introduction shows that Prices had a reverence for many of these dishes. Some of them are quite elaborate, but the book also promised to make the recipes easy and accessible. So even foods that were served at some of the finest dining restaurants in Paris were adapted for home cooks. "All those irritating measurements, strange ingredients, and complicated procedures are now geared for the American kitchen," they wrote.

"You see, even a gourmet cook never loses his taste for a good old, American hot dog." — From the 1979 "American Screams" documentary

"In the high-flying jangle of my professional rounds, I've found that two things can get me back to earthbound composure — gardening and bread making." — From the section House Bread in "A Treasury of Great Recipes"

"All you really need is a cooker, ingredients that you can get at your neighborhood shops or supermarkets, and a willingness to try something a little bit different." — From Season 1, Episode 1 of "Cooking Price-Wise"

"If you want to deodorize, perfume, or freshen the air at home, just bake a loaf of bread. It's really great fun and very exciting; the staff of life is no shillelagh but a highly sensitive wand with which to conduct an orchestra of delights." — From the section House Bread in "A Treasury of Great Recipes"

"The electric blender has come a long way since its original purpose in life — making frozen daiquiris." — From the section Blender Magic in "A Treasury of Great Recipes"