Our study subsumes the ethno-linguistics, which in Eugen Coşeriu’s terms, is aiming at the study of language variety and variation in close contact with civilization and culture of a community. The article presents the most important sources of origins of culinary phrasemes, which have been divided into the universal and the specific ones. Within culinary phraseology one can identify universal units and the specific ones which are strictly connected with a given language and culture. It has been illustrated by the examples from two languages: German and Romanian. Culinary names belong to the main lexical store of a language and that is why are often used in phraseology. The study investigates the phraseological motivation of these sequences, especially the common sources of the German and Romanian phraseology.