Falsely adjust the accounts. The verb “to cook” has meant to manipulate ever since the 1600s and continued to be used, especially with reference to changing figures, to the present day. The current phrase popularized the concept, its rhyme more attractive than simply “cook the accounts,” and it has largely replaced other versions since the second half of the 1900s. The 1986 film Legal Eagles had it (“The three partners were cookin’ the books”), as did a New York Times editorial about the Environmental Protection Agency: “The agency was thus ordered to cook the books, deliberately underestimating the reductions that would be possible under alternative approaches . . .” (March 21, 2005).