One never knows what one might find wandering around the bookshelves of a famous French chef friend. Browsing among hundreds of cookbooks, coffee table food books, books about food history, ideas and technique — ranging from Neapolitan pizza to couscous to the Tsukiji fish market — there it was — tattered, faded, brittle, with a scotch-taped binding and pages that could only be turned with a surgeon’s hand — a first edition of one of the most seminal books in all of western food culture.
“Where did you find this?” I asked. “In an old bookstore in Moscow (Russia, not Idaho)” he replied. “I think I paid three dollars for it…”
Self-published (anonymously) in 1825, The Physiology of Taste was subtitled Mediations on Transcendental Gastronomy. It served nineteenth century Frenchmen (and later gourmands on both sides of the pond) as an indispensable treatise on the art of living and dining well.
Among its most quoted aphorisms:
II. Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating.
III. The destiny of nations depends on how they nourish themselves.
IV. Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are.
X. Men who stuff themselves and grow tipsy know neither how to eat nor how to drink.
XIV. A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.
XX. To invite people to dine with us is to make ourselves responsible for their well-being for as long as they are under our roofs.
One could say each of these is as true today as it was 185 years ago (excepting perhaps the one-eyed, cheese-less lady), and you could do a lot worse than dedicating your gastronomic life to the principles espoused on these pages.
And since one day, those pages will no doubt turn to dust, I’ve taken it upon myself to photograph the original text. Above is just a sample.
Just thought you’d like to know.
ELV-what you have portrayed, at least in in my opinion, is one of the most precious tomes in all of culinaria. A first edition of Brillat-Savarin ranks up in the heights of a first edition of Escoffier. (Actually, now that I think of it, Brillat-Savarin probably ranks higher than Escoffier in terms of the stature of his writings).
While we all love and laugh at the silly cotton candy desserts, the eye candy “hostesses” and the ridiculous prices of wine when we read about dining in Las Vegas, at its core–the core of every good, serious Food Writer–is a respect and knowledge of the classic foundations of food writing. A foundation based on knowing about ingredients, techinque, history, tradition and so much more–a foundation begun by Monsieur Brillat-Savarin.
Thank you ELV, you of course are a Member of that club of serious food writers. You obviously spotted something special on the bookshelf. Thanks for sharing.