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• Too many cooks spoil the broth
  Too many cooks spoil the broth

  When too many people work together on a project, the result is inferior.
• too many cooks spoil the broth
  too many cooks spoil the broth

  Too many persons involved in managing an activity can ruin it, as in Without a conductor, every player had an idea for how the music should go—too many cooks spoil the broth. This expression alludes to each of many cooks adding something to a soup, which finally tastes awful. It was already considered a proverb in 1575 (by George Gascoigne in The Life of P. Care).

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Cultural  

1. When too many people work together on a project, the result is inferior.

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too many cooks spoil the broth Idioms  

1. Too many persons involved in managing an activity can ruin it, as in Without a conductor, every player had an idea for how the music should go—too many cooks spoil the broth. This expression alludes to each of many cooks adding something to a soup, which finally tastes awful. It was already considered a proverb in 1575 (by George Gascoigne in The Life of P. Care).

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Too many cooks spoil the broth too many cooks spoil the broth

Too many cooks spoil the broth, as we know, and we must not spoil our feast.

From Five Mice in a Mouse-trap by the Man in the Moon. by Addie Ledyard

And, as Amyas sagely remarked, "Too many cooks spoil the broth, and half-a-dozen gentlemen aboard one ship are as bad as two kings of Brentford."

From Westward Ho!, or, the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of her most glorious majesty Queen Elizabeth by Charles Kingsley

Too many cooks spoil the broth; and they also resembled a balky team of cross-grained mules pulling, kicking and flinging against one another!

From Project Gutenberg book of Historical Romance of the American Negro by Charles H. Fowler

Too many cooks spoil the broth, you know.

From Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines The German Spy's Secret by Charles Amory Beach

"Too many cooks spoil the broth," says the proverb, and the same rule applies doubly to such meals as the one the girls were so busily preparing.

From The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains or Bessie King's Strange Adventure by Jane L. Stewart

But with a story-heavy game like this, too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say, so slow and steady it was.

From The Verge ● Jul. 27, 2021

But it can actually be quite burdensome when someone tries to help but doesn’t know what they are doing: too many cooks spoil the broth – especially if they can’t cook.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 17, 2018

Q: In English, we say too many cooks spoil the broth.

From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2016

When do too many cooks spoil the broth?

From Forbes ● Jan. 16, 2012

Let them give lie to the old proverb that too many cooks spoil the broth.

From Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Joseph Dommers Vehling