cook the books

C

cook the books (idiom, metaphor)
/ˌkʊk ðə ˈbʊks/

Meanings

• To falsify financial records to make a company look better than it is.
• To manipulate accounts illegally for gain.
• To alter financial records to avoid paying taxes.
• To adjust figures dishonestly to hide losses or theft.

Synonyms: falsify accounts; manipulate records; forge accounts; misrepresent finances; financial fraud.

Example Sentences

1. The manager tried to cook the books to make the investors happy.
2. The company was caught because they had cooked the books for years.
3. The businessman cooked the books to hide his real income from the tax authorities.
4. He regularly cooks the books to cover up the losses.

Origin and History

There are several well-documented explanations for how “cook the books” entered English usage. One dominant view states that the phrase is purely metaphorical: it borrows the image of transforming raw ingredients into a finished dish and applies it to the deliberate alteration of records.

Another explanation highlights the historical slang sense of cook: from the 17th century onward, cook was used to mean “tamper with” or “falsify,” making the leap to financial falsification linguistically natural.

A third theory focuses on usage development: writers employed phrases like “cook up accounts” in the 18th century to describe fabricated reports, and the fixed formula involving ‘books’ (ledgers) became standardized in the 19th century. These explanations collectively demonstrate a clear progression from a general slang meaning to a specialized idiomatic expression.

Country of First Appearance

The idiom originated in Britain. The earliest documentary evidence shows the figurative use of cook meaning “falsify” and its pairing with accounts in British sources during the 17th to 19th centuries. This British origin is confirmed by literary and historical texts that associate “cook” with tampering, later merging with financial contexts to form the expression “cook the books.”

1636 — Early Use of Cook Meaning “Falsify”

One of the earliest printed examples comes from a letter attributed to the Earl of Strafford in 1636:

“The Proof was once clear, however they have cook’d it since.”

This demonstrates the figurative sense of cook as “alter or tamper with,” showing that the metaphorical foundation existed long before its financial application.

1751 — Connection to Accounts in Print

The first clear link between cooking metaphors and falsifying accounts appears in Tobias Smollett’s 1751 novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle:

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

This quotation marks a critical stage in the idiom’s development, where the culinary metaphor is explicitly tied to financial records and deception.

1863 — Modern Form of the Idiom

By the mid-19th century, the phrase had fully evolved into its current form. Charles Reade’s novel Hard Cash (1863) contains the line:

“You have cooked the books in time.”

This is the earliest confirmed instance of the exact modern idiom, proving its established use in the English language by the 1860s.

Origin Conclusion

The evidence clearly demonstrates that “cook the books” emerged in Britain through a gradual process: first as slang for tampering (cook), then connected to accounts, and finally solidifying into its modern idiomatic form in the 19th century. The metaphor of “cooking” symbolizes deliberate transformation, which in this context means falsifying records. From early 17th-century correspondence to 18th-century literature and finally to 19th-century novels, the idiom’s evolution reflects both linguistic creativity and social realities of accounting and fraud.

Book, Money