The Physiology of Taste [Paperback]

You can't properly call yourself a gourmand (or even a minor foodie) until you've digested Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's delectable 1825 treatise, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Brilliantly and lovingly translated in 1949 by M.F.K. Fisher (herself the doyenne of 20th-century food writing), the book offers the Professor's meditations not just on matters of cooking and eating, but extends to sleep, dreams, exhaustion, and even death (which he defines as the "complete interruption of sensual relations"). Brillat-Savarin, whose genius is in the examination and discussion of food, cooking, and eating, proclaims that "the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star."

Chocoholics will be satisfied to know that "carefully prepared chocolate is as healthful a food as it is pleasant ... that it is above all helpful to people who must do a great deal of mental work...." He examines the erotic properties of the truffle ("the truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac; but it can, in certain situations, make women tenderer and men more agreeable"), the financial influence of the turkey (apparently quite a prize in 19th-century Paris), and the level of gourmandise among the various professions (bankers, doctors, writers, and men of faith are all predestined to love food). Just as engrossing as the text itself are M.F.K. Fisher's lively, personal glosses at the end of every chapter, which make up almost a quarter of the book. These two are soulmates separated by centuries, and Fisher's fondness for the Professor comes through on every page. As she notes at the end, "I have yet to be bored or offended, which is more than most women can say of any relationship, either ghostly or corporeal." --Rebecca A. Staffel --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In contrast to a very pricey limited edition published --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"High spirited and irreverent, Fisher matches the philosophical meanderings of Brillat-Savarin, whom she referred to as 'The Professor.' Her extensive translator's notes, which take up almost a quarter of the book, are funny and scholarly by turns. Fisher seems the very reincarnation of Brillat-Savarin, and their dialogue-stretching over more than a century-is a delightfully flirtatious one." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"This is one of a handful of works that have earned reputations as defining, unique, and immortal." -- Baltimore Sun --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was born in 1755 in Belley France, an area renowned for its food and wine. After graduating in law, Briallat-Savarin became magistrate of Belley and was later elected Mayor. During the French Revolution his life was endangered and he fled to other parts of Europe and then America, earning his living as a violinist in a theatre orchestra. He returned to France in 1796 and became a judge of the Supreme Courts of Appeal. He began compiling a book of meditations on gastronomy and in 1825, a few months before his death, published this brilliant treatise on the pleasures of eating: the culmination of a life-long love affair with food. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

The book is — what? Does anyone know? Intermittently it is an autobiography, but told principally in dinner anecdotes (except one, which is about a breakfast, but so protracted that it, too, becomes dinner). It is not a cookbook, although the next time you are bestowed with a turbot the size and awkwardness of a small bicycle you will know how to cook it (too big to fit in the oven, the sea creature is effectively steamed in the tub). The difficulty is compounded by the book's opening, which invites us to think of it as something it never becomes. In the first two pages, we learn that a meal without cheese is as incomplete as a woman without an eye, a startling comparison to contemplate. We also learn that a dinner is never boring — at least for the first hour; that a new dish matters more to human happiness than the discovery of a star; that if, at the end of a meal, you are sated and slurring, you do not know how to eat and drink; and, most famously, that you are what you eat, a succinct expression of food and identity repeated so relentlessly that it is now a modern advertising banality. These ''Aphorisms of the Professor'' (''to serve as a preamble to his work and as a lasting foundation for the science of gastronomy'') represent a lifetime of one-liners, the stuff that, revised, scribbled into a notebook, rehearsed and repeated over a fortified beverage, kept the bachelor scholar from ever having to dine alone. But after page 2, the aphorisms disappear. Instead, there is history. Should we trust it? The Professor is not an historian. Or is he? There is science, more science than history, actually a lot of science. Do we dismiss it because we know better? Do we? Who is this guy anyway? --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.