The Physiology of Taste (9 page)

I: THE UNIVERSE IS
nothing without the things that live in it, and everything that lives, eats.

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.
¹

IV:
Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.
^2,
3

V:
The Creator, while forcing men to eat in order to live, tempts him to do so with appetite and then rewards him with pleasure.

VI:
Good living is an act of intelligence, by which we choose things which have an agreeable taste rather than those which do not.

VII:
The pleasures of the table are for every man, of every land, and no matter of what place in history or society; they can be a part of all his other pleasures, and they last the longest, to console him when he has outlived the rest.

VIII:
The table is the only place where a man is never bored for the first hour.

IX:
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.
⁴

X:
Men who stuff themselves and grow tipsy know neither how to eat nor how to drink.

XI:
The proper progression of courses in a dinner is from the most substantial to the lightest.

XII:
The proper progression of wines or spirits is from the mildest to the headiest and most aromatic.

XIII:
It is heresy to insist that we must not mix wines: a man’s palate can grow numb and react dully to even the best bottle, after the third glass from it.

XIV:
A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.

XV:
We can learn to be cooks, but we must be born knowing how to roast.

XVI:
The most indispensable quality of a cook is promptness, and it should be that of the diner as well.

XVII:
A host who makes all his guests wait for one late-comer is careless of their well-being.
⁵

XVIII:
He who plays host without giving his personal care to the repast is unworthy of having friends to invite to it.

XIX:
The mistress of the house should always make sure that the coffee is good, and the master that the wines are of the best.

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.

1.
Here it is hard not to quote almost anyone in the world who has thought more than three thoughts, since one of them is bound to be about his nourishment. To tease myself I like to remember what a man said who has perhaps most puzzled and astonished the other thinkers. It was Albert Einstein. “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser,” he decided quite early in his life, as simply as if he were chalking one more equation on the world’s blackboard.

2.
More than two decades after these Aphorisms first appeared, the German philosopher of materialism, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, stated with an air of belligerent discovery,
Der Mensch ist was er isst
…“Potato blood can make no revolution,” he said disgustedly, and he recommended that the hungry weaklings who had failed to bring off the 1848 Revolution in his country change their diet to one of beans! His theory, though not original with him as he believed, was kept alive in the Teutonic mind long enough to have Hitler’s humanitarians apply it to many a nation
made hungry so systematically that not even potato blood flowed through its veins. It would be difficult for the Professor, I think, to preserve his philosophical calm in the face of such murderous application of his Aphorism …

3.
See “Influence of Gourmandism on Wedded Happiness” and my “Note of a Patriotic Gastronomer” in Meditation 11.

4.
This most quoted of the Professor’s rules of conduct came, he writes with such candor that it cannot be a confession (“Varieties,” XXV), from his old friend Henrion de Pansey, a well-known French lawyer whose first names were Pierre-Paul and whose four-line eulogy was not needed until four years after Brillat-Savarin published it in 1825. They seem to have been without mutual jealousy or suspicion, unusual in any old men but especially those who must weave their way together through the courts of law.

5.
One of the great English gourmets of the nineteenth century set his dinner hour at five in the afternoon, which was the proper time in those days, and at five minutes past five he locked his door and firmly hid the key. Late-comers were not only turned away, but were never asked again.

FRIEND
—This morning my wife and I decided, at breakfast, that you really ought to have your
GASTRONOMICAL
MEDITATIONS
published, and as soon as possible.
¹

AUTHOR—
What woman wants, God wants
. There, in five words, you have the whole guide to Parisian life! But I myself am not a Parisian, and anyway as a bachelor …
²

FRIEND
—Good Lord, bachelors are as much victims of the rule as the rest of us, and sometimes to our great disadvantage! But in this case even celibacy can’t save you: my wife is convinced that she has the right to dictate to you about the book, since it was at her country house that you wrote the first pages of it.

AUTHOR
—You know, my dear Doctor, my deference for the ladies. More than once you’ve complimented me on my submission to their orders. You were even among those who once said that I would make an excellent husband! Nevertheless, I refuse to publish my book.
³

FRIEND
—And why?

AUTHOR
—Because, since I am committed to a life of serious professional studies, I am afraid that people who might know the book only by its title would think that I wrote nothing but fiddle-faddle.

FRIEND
—Pure panic! Aren’t thirty-six years of continuous public service enough to have established the opposite reputation? Anyway, my wife and I believe that everyone will want to read you.

AUTHOR
—Really?

FRIEND
—Learned men will read you to learn more from you, and to fill out for themselves what you have only sketched.

AUTHOR
—That might well be …

FRIEND
—The ladies will read you because they will see very plainly that …

AUTHOR
—My dear friend, I am old! I’ve acquired wisdom, at least:
miserere mei!
⁴

FRIEND
—Gourmands will read you because you do justice to them, because at long last you give them the place they merit in society.

AUTHOR
—This one time you’re right! It is incredible that they have been misunderstood for so long, the poor fellows! I suffer for them like their own father … they are so charming, and have such twinkling little eyes!

FRIEND
—Moreover, have you not often told us that our libraries definitely lack a book like yours?

AUTHOR
—I’ve said so … I admit that, and would choke myself rather than take it back!

FRIEND
—Now you are talking like a man completely convinced! Come along home with me and …

AUTHOR
—Not at all! If an author’s life has its little pleasures, it also has plenty of stings in it. I’ll leave all that to my heirs.

FRIEND
—But you disinherit your friends then … your acquaintances, your contemporaries. Have you enough courage for that?

AUTHOR
—Heirs! Heirs! I’ve heard it said that ghosts are deeply flattered by the compliments of the living. That is a divine blessing which I’ll gladly reserve for the next world.

FRIEND
—But are you quite sure that these compliments will reach the right ghost? Are you equally sure of the trustworthiness of your heirs?

AUTHOR
—I haven’t any reason to believe that they will neglect one such duty, since for it I shall excuse them from a great many others!

FRIEND
—But will they, can they, give to your book that fatherly love, those paternal attentions without which a published work seems always a little awkward on its first appearance?

AUTHOR
—My manuscript will be corrected, neatly copied, polished in every way. There will be nothing more to do but print it.

FRIEND
—And the chances of fate? Alas, similar plans have caused the loss of plenty of priceless works! Among them, for instance, there was that of the famous Lecat, on the state of the soul during sleep … his life work …

AUTHOR
—That was, undoubtedly, a great loss. I am far from aspiring to any such regrets.

FRIEND
—Believe me, your heirs will have plenty to cope with, what with the church, the law courts, the doctors themselves! Even if they do not lack willingness, they’ll have little time for the various worries that precede, accompany, and follow the publication of a book, no matter how long or short it may be.

AUTHOR
—But my title! My subject! And my mocking friends!

FRIEND
—The single word
gastronomy
makes everyone prick up his ears. The subject is always fashionable. And mockers like to eat, as well as the rest. And there’s something else: can you ignore the fact that the most solemn personages have occasionally produced light works? There is President Montesquieu, for instance.
^*

AUTHOR
—By Jove, that’s so! He wrote
THE
TEMPLE
OF GNIDUS
… and one might do well to remember that there is more real point in meditating on what is at once necessary,
pleasant, and a daily occupation, than in learning what was said and done more than two thousand years ago by a couple of little brats in the woods of Greece, one chasing, the other pretending to flee …

FRIEND
—Then you give up, finally?