cook up

See also: cook-up

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

cook up (third-person singular simple present cooks up, present participle cooking up, simple past and past participle cooked up)

1. (transitive) To prepare (food or chemical substances) by cooking or heating.

   Let me cook up some eggs and bacon before you go.

   To cook up a batch of biodiesel, scientists stir together methanol and vegetable fat.

   Owsley Stanley started cooking up those famous purple LSD tabs.

2. (transitive, figuratively) To manufacture; to invent (something, often a deceit or falsehood); to counterfeit (something).

   Troponym: whip up

   The financiers cooked up an instrument called a collateralized debt obligation.

   He really cooked up a good one this time, something about an airline disaster.

   • 2017 January 14, “Thailand's new king rejects the army's proposed constitution”, in The Economist‎^[1]:

     For more than two years Thailand's ruling junta, which seized power in a coup in 2014, has been cooking up a constitution which it hopes will keep military men in control even after elections take place.

   • 2021 September 8, “RMT on "war footing" in response to workforce cutback threats”, in RAIL, number 939, page 15:

     "RMT will not sit back while this carve-up of the rail network is cooked up in company boardrooms. [...]".

3. (slang) To prepare (heroin, opium, crack, or meth) by heating or otherwise manufacturing.
4. (slang) To manufacture a significant amount of illegal drugs (LSD, methamphetamine, etc.).
5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cook,‎ up.

Derived terms

• cook up a storm