Where does the saying "Cooking the books" come from?

Cooking seems a rather odd choice of word to convey fraud. The Oxford English Dictionary lists a dozen or so meanings of the verb 'to cook', ranging from 'prepare opium for use' to 'make the call of a cuckoo' and, of course, 'prepare food by the action of heat'. Tucked away at the bottom there is also the meaning 'present in a surreptitiously altered form' and it is that meaning of cook that was used in the coinage of the phrase 'cook the books'. The allusion appears to be the changing of one thing into another, as in the conversion of food ingredients into meals. This usage dates back to Stuart and possibly Tudor England and was used by the Earl of Strafford in his Letters and dispatches, 1636:

"The Proof was once clear, however they have cook'd it since."

The verb was in common use by the 18th century and Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, 1751, made the link to finance explicit:

"Some falsified printed accounts, artfully cooked up, on purpose to mislead and deceive."

Apart from the expression 'cooking the books' this use of 'cook' has become less common in the 19th and 20th centuries.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/cook-the-books....

Cooking seems a rather odd choice of word to convey fraud. The Oxford English Dictionary lists a dozen or so meanings of the verb 'to cook', ranging from 'prepare opium for use' to 'make the call of a cuckoo' and, of course, 'prepare food by the action of heat'. Tucked away at the bottom there is also the meaning 'present in a surreptitiously altered form' and it is that meaning of cook that was used in the coinage of the phrase 'cook the books'. The allusion appears to be the changing of one thing into another, as in the conversion of food ingredients into meals. This usage dates back to Stuart and possibly Tudor England and was used by the Earl of Strafford in his Letters and dispatches, 1636:

it comes from people how use accountants to manage there finances, cooking the books means the accountant is trying to make it look like you have less coming in than you really do, this avoids bigger tax bills at the end of the year

Great if you can find a dodgy accountant

It`s American saying the gangsters used in the 1930 when the bookkeepers used to fiddle the accounts,so that` s what they mean cooking the books.

sumwhere...

ya i remember has to be a brain of a hUMAN BEING!!

whtsay?