That is true, but in that case they are part of the value itself, they're not doing anything special:

> Per the grammar above, the cookie-value MAY be wrapped in DQUOTE characters. Note that in this case, the initial and trailing DQUOTE characters are not stripped. They are part of the cookie-value, and will be included in Cookie header fields sent to the server.

Why does the specification specifically mention them, then?

Ah, thanks for the clarification!