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Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826) is the author of La Physiologie du goût [The Physiology of Taste]. Appearing in Paris in 1825, this delightful record of a lifetime’s observations has remained continuously in print, unrivalled as the core gastronomic text. While the book is more quoted than read and lacks an authoritative edition or analysis in either French or English, it provides a seemingly inexhaustible supply of insights that includes a hedonic theory of history.
La Physiologie du Goût
“Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are,” Brillat-Savarin is well known for announcing. This is the fourth of twenty aphorisms that he intended “to serve as a prolegomenon to his work and as a lasting foundation to the science,” by which he meant gastronomy. The aphorisms announced an ontology: “The universe is nothing without life, and all that lives nourishes itself” (Aphorism I). They recommend hedonism: “The Creator, obliging...
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References
Barthes, R. (1975). Lecture de Brillat-Savarin. In J. A. Brillat-Savarin (Ed.), Physiologie du goût (pp. 7–33). Paris: Hermann (translated as “Reading Brillat-Savarin. In M. Blonsky (Ed.), On signs (pp. 61–75). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University).
Brillat-Savarin, J. A. (1826). Physiologie du goût, ou Méditations de gastronomie transcendante; ouvrage théorique, historique et à l’ordre du jour, Dédié au Gastronomes parisiens, par un professeur…(2 Vols.). Paris: Chez A. Sautelet et Cie Libraires.
Brillat-Savarin, J. A. (1971). The physiology of taste: Or meditations on transcendental gastronomy (trans: Fisher, M. F. K.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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MacDonogh, G. (1992). Brillat-Savarin: The judge and his stomach. London: John Murray.
McLean, A. L. (2012). Aesthetic pleasure in twentieth-century women’s food writing: The innovative appetites of M.F.K. Fisher, Alice B. Toklas and Elizabeth David. New York/London: Routledge.
Shepherd, G. M. (2012). Neurogastronomy: How the brain creates flavor and why it matters. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sweeney, K. W. (2007). Can a soup be beautiful? The rise of gastronomy and the aesthetics of food. In F. Allhoff & D. Monroe (Eds.), Food and philosophy: Eat, think and be merry (pp. 117–132). Malden: Blackwell.
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Symons, M. (2014). Brillat-Savarin and Food. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_4-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_4-6
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