The Physiology of Taste: Or, Transcendental Gastronomy - Couverture souple

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1603862242 ISBN 13 : 9781603862240

Editeur : Merchant Books, 2009

Synopsis

The Physiology of Taste An unabridged, digitally enhanced printing with updated layout and typeface. Chapters include, but are not limited to: THE SENSES - Number of the Senses - Action of the Senses - Perfectness of the Senses - Powers of the Taste - Object of the Action of the Senses - TASTE - Definition of Taste - Sensation of Taste - Flavors - Influence of Smelling on the Taste - Analyses of the Sensation of Taste - ... Full description

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

A book without precedent, skirting the line between recipe-book, memoir, history and philosophy, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste is edited with an introduction by Anne Drayton in Penguin Classics. Brillat-Savarin's unique, exuberant collection of dishes, experiences, reflections, history and philosophy raised gastronomy to an art form. First published in France in 1825, this remarkable book reflected a new era in French cuisine: the advent of the restaurant, which gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to select their dishes with precision and anticipation. Yet the author also gives his views on taste, diet and maintaining a healthy weight, on digestion, sleep, dreams and being a gourmand. Witty, shrewd and anecdotal, The Physiology of Taste not only contains some remarkable recipes, it an elegant argument for the pleasures of good food and a hearty appetite. Anne Drayton's lively translation is accompanied by an introduction illustrating the remarkable nature of this work, by a man who was not a chef or an author but a magistrate in a French provincial town. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1825) was born in Belley, France, an area renowned for its food and wine. After graduating in law, Brillat-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.

Extrait :

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?

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Merchant Books
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1603862242
• ISBN 13: 9781603862240
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 220