The Physiology of Taste (64 page)
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Authors: Anthelme Jean Brillat-Savarin
POEM
To Be Inscribed Beneath the Portrait of M. H … de P …
.
Tireless in all his learned works was he,
And his great office worthily sustain’d;
Yet the wise student still the friend remain’d,
Whose cares ne’er warped his geniality.
In 1814 President H … was awarded the portfolio of Justice, and the employees of this ministry still remember the reply he
made to them, when they came in a body to present their initial congratulations to him.
“Sirs,” he said with that paternal tone of voice which blended so well with his great stature and his advanced years, “it is probable that I shall not be with you long enough to do you any good, but at least I can assure you that I shall never do you harm.”
Here my task ends; but in order to prove that I still have breath left in me, I shall proceed to kill three birds with one stone.
I shall give to my readers of every land some addresses which will be of great benefit to them; I shall bestow upon my favorite artists an order of merit which they well deserve; and I shall share with the public a faggot from my own warm fireside.
(1) Madame
Chevet
, grocery store, Palais-Royal, number 220, near the Théâtre-Français. I am more her faithful client than a heavy purchaser; our relationship dates from her first appearance on the gastronomical horizon, and she it is who had the kindness to weep once for my death, which fortunately was only a case of mistaken identity.
Madame Chevet is the undisputed intermediary between the finest provender and the great fortunes. She owes her prosperity to her professional integrity: anything that the passage of time has injured disappears from her shelves as if by magic. The nature of her business demands that she make a fairly large profit, but once the price is agreed upon, the most excellent quality is assured.
This honorable firm is to be handed on, and her daughters, hardly past infancy, are already following her principles without a false step.
Madame Chevet has agents in every country where the wishes of the most capricious gastronomer can be satisfied, and the more rivals she gains, the higher is her reputation.
(2) Monsieur
Achard
, pastry cook and confectioner, Rue de Grammont, number 9, a native of Lyons who started his business some ten years ago, built it on his reputation for his biscuits and
his vanilla wafers, which for a long time have never successfully been imitated.
Everything in his shop has something delicate and tempting about it which cannot possibly be found elsewhere; the touch of common man seems completely foreign to it. It is as if these dainties sprang from some enchanted country: and since everything that is seen there disappears the same day, it could be said that
chez
Achard Tomorrow is unknown.
Almost every instant of a summer’s day a fashionable carriage will draw up Rue de Grammont, usually bearing a handsome dandy
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and a lovely befeathered lady. The former dashes into the shop, where he arms himself with a fat box of delicacies. And at his return he is greeted with an “Oh, my sweet! how good that looks!” or better:
“O DEAR!
HOW IT LOOKS GOOD! MY MOUTH!
…” And quick as a wink the horse pulls away, and carries this whole pretty picture toward the Bois de Boulogne.
Gourmands are such enthusiastic and forgiving creatures that for a long time there they endured the sourness of a most disagreeable clerk. She has finally been removed; the cash desk has been reinhabited, and now the pretty little hand of Miss Anna Achard gives a new quality to concoctions which already are enough recommendation in themselves.
(3) Monsieur
Limet
, Rue de Richelieu, number 79, my neighbor and a baker to some houses of the highest rank, has also won my loyal praise.
Finding himself heir to a fairly insignificant sum, he raised it to a high degree of prosperity and reputation.
His ordinary loaves are very fine, and it would be difficult to find in a single sample of quality bread such whiteness, flavor, and delicacy as his possesses.
Foreigners, as well as visitors from the country, always find in M. Limet’s shop the kind of bread they are used to; buyers come in person to him, take their turn, and often stand in line.
This success is not astonishing when it is known that M. Limet is not the slave of custom, that he tries earnestly to uncover the latest departures in his art, and that he is advised by scholars of the first rank.
AN HISTORICAL ELEGY
First parents of the human race, whose feastings are historical, what did you not lose for a ruddy apple, and what would you not have given for a truffled turkey hen? But in your Earthly Paradise you had no cooks, no fine confectioners!
I weep for you!
All-powerful kings who devastated Troy, your strength is hymned from generation unto generation; but you did set a very uninviting table. You never knew, reduced as you were to ox thighs and the backs of hogs, the charms of a matelotte or the ecstasies of a chicken fricassée.
I weep for you!
Aspasia and Chloe, and all of you who, drawn by the Grecian artists, make present beauties pale, your lovely lips never savored the suave delicacy of a meringue concocted with vanilla or rose water; perhaps you never rose higher than common gingerbread.
I weep for you!
Sweet priestesses of Vesta,
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at once weighed with so many honors and threatened with such dreadful punishment, if only you had tasted, at least, our delightful syrups, meant to refresh your souls, or our candied fruits which outbloom every season, or our fragrant creams, the marvel of our times!
I weep for you!
Roman bankers, milking all of the world’s markets, never did your famous dining halls contain such jellies as our own, to delight our lazy moments, nor those many-flavored ices whose chill laughs at torrid zones.
I weep for you!
Unconquerable paladins, sung to high heaven by the prating troubadours, when you had vanquished your giants, released your captive maidens, wiped out your opposing armies, never, alas, did a sloe-eyed slave girl serve to you a sparkling cup of champagne, or a Madeiran malvoisie,
76
or a liqueur, that creation of
the Golden Age. You were left to the mercies of an ale or an herb-flavored vinegar.
77
I weep for you!
Mitred and croziered abbots, apportioners of Heaven’s bliss; and you, terrible Knights Templar, who took up arms for the extermination of the Saracens: you never knew the joys of chocolate, which brings back our vigor, nor of the Arabian bean which kindles thought within us.
I weep for you!
Queenly ladies of the manor, who filled the emptiness of your masters’ Crusades by elevating to your own heights your confessors and your page boys, you never shared with them the delicacies of well-made biscuits nor the delights of a macaroon.
I weep for you!
And you, finally, the gastronomers of 1825, who still find satiety at Abondance’ breast, and dream of newly invented recipes, you will not live to revel in the discoveries which the sciences prepare for the year of 1900, delicacies born from the rocks, perchance, or liqueurs resulting from the pressure of a hundred different vapors;
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you will not see the things which travelers who are not yet even born will bring from that half of the globe which still waits for our discovery, our exploration.
I weep for you!
*
Above all those are to be pitied whose needs are unsuspected; for it must be admitted in all fairness that the Parisians are generous and charitable citizens. In the Year X
2
I paid a small weekly pension to an aged nun, who lay suffering, half-paralyzed, in a sixth floor attic room. This courageous soul received enough help from her neighbors to make her life a fairly comfortable one, and to feed, besides, a lay sister who had thrown in her lot with her.
*
The English, epigrammatically, call
WELSH RABBET
(lapin gaulois)
a slice of cheese toasted on a piece of bread. Of course this preparation is not as filling as would be a rabbit, but it leads to more drinking, makes wine taste good, and has a very real place as dessert for an informal meal.
*
This expression is used in English to denote any dead or drunk body which is being carried.
*
“Mon cher monsieur, vous êtes en vérité de très-bonne compagnie, mais vous étes trop fort buveur pour nous.”
*
It is well known that there were a few years ago and perhaps still are, in England, dining rooms in which one could relieve himself (
FAIRE SON PETIT TOUR
) without leaving the room: a strange custom, but one that would be fairly easy to follow in a country where the ladies retire as soon as the men begin their wine drinking.
*
A PIERNA TENDIDA
(
SPANISH)
.
*
Julien was prospering in
1794
. He was a clever young fellow who, according to him, had been chef to the archbishop of Bordeaux. He must have earned a handsome fortune, if God spared him.
*
Word for word translation of the English compliment which must have been made on this occasion.
*
Baron Rostaing, my friend and relative, now commissary of stores for the army at Lyons. He is an administrator of the first rank, and has among his papers a system of military accountancy so clear that we would do well to adopt it.
*
I was seated one night at dinner beside a Creole who had lived for two years in New York, and did not know enough English to ask for bread. I admitted my astonishment. “Bah!” he said, shrugging. “Do you think I am stupid enough to bother myself to learn the language of such a loutish race?”
*
THEE
and
THOU
are not used in English, and a carter even as he showers his horse with lashes says to him: “
GO, SIR, GO, SIR, I SAY
(allez, monsieur, allez, monsieur, vous dis-je).”
*
In all countries regulated by English law, fights are inevitably preceded by much verbal incivility, for there is a saying that
“HIGH WORDS BREAK NO BONES
(injuries ne cassent pas les os).” Often the whole thing goes no further than that, and the law is such that one hesitates to strike an actual blow, for he who hits first is breaking the public peace, and will always be the one who must pay the fine, no matter what the reason for the battle.
†
A limpid river whose source is above Rossillon. It flows nearby Belley, and joins the Rhone above Peyrieux. Trout from its waters have flesh of a delicate rose color, and that of the pike is as white as ivory.
GUT! GUT! GUT!
(
GERM
.)
*
SELF CREATED
.
*
The director of streams and forests counted them and sold them; commerce flourished because of them, as did the monks, great sums of money were put into circulation, and no man could complain of the freak storm.
*
I have constantly felt this effect in the same circumstances, and am led to believe that the thinness of the air in the mountains lets come into play certain cerebral powers which are oppressed by the heaviness of the lowland atmosphere.
*
This is a mistake which we let stand out of respect for the author’s text; the passage which follows the verse makes it plain, moreover, that in doing so we are carrying out his intention.
*
Here, unless I am mistaken, is the third work which I have delegated to others:
1
st, a Monograph on Obesity;
2
nd, a theoretical and practical Treatise on Hunting Luncheons;
3
rd, a chronological anthology of gastronomical Poetry.
*
The English and the Dutch eat for their breakfasts bread, butter, fish, ham, and eggs, and almost never drink anything but tea.
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*
Henrion de Pansey.
1.
When the Professor wrote of his cousin-by-marriage Juliette Récamier he did so with a kind of affectionate discretion which was characteristic of him, especially in connection with women, and even more especially in connection with beautiful ones.
She, on the other hand, seems not to have mentioned him in the letters which have been saved for us. He was a favorite guest at her innumerable dinners, suppers, and soirées, but in the crush of crowned heads and assorted political, social, and sexual lions that made her one of Europe’s great
salonniéres
, a man as reticently unimportant as her cousin would cause very little stir.
It is known that he admired her enough to own a bust of her by Chinard, and a miniature portrait by Augustin, both of which his ancient relatives the Dubois brothers appreciated with such ageless lustiness the time Brillat-Savarin made them a
fondue
. It is known that he did not hesitate to tease her: “She came in late, as usual,” he writes, and that is bold language about a beautiful woman who perhaps more than any others of her kind made great men kneel to her.
Her niece Amélie, later her adopted daughter and a relative also of Brillat-Savarin, in whose family house in Belley she probably was first presented to la Récamier, once wrote of her “imperious desire to please which she had from her birth, together with all the natural gifts which made pleasing so easy to her.” This may seem an innocently sly Victorianism, an ambiguity about a famous woman who did indeed manage to puzzle the moralists of her own as well as later times. Juliette Reécamier was the passionate target of too many nobly aimed arrows to remain unstung by gossip, but her cousin’s quiet teasing, and the fidelity of such an austere lover as Camille Jordan, who “strove,” wrote Amélie, “to counteract the influence of the intoxicating homage paid her in society,” paint a truer picture of her.