Brillat-Savarin and Physiologie du goût

When I first read The Art of Eating by the brilliant American food writer M.F.K. Fisher, she turned me on to the writing of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), author of the remarkable book Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), which was published in 1825, a year before he died. It's a cracking good read: highly opinionated, lively, curious, well informed, in some cases of course extremely dated. Anybody who enjoys food and food writing should probably give it a look.

Since it was sitting on my kitchen table anyway tonight, I decided I'd amuse myself by flipping through it and picking any page at random to see whether it would live up to my feeling that it's got gems of foodie wisdom on every single page. Here's my quick, loose translation; you can judge for yourself whether the great Brillat-Savarin lived up to my expectations:

(From Meditation XI) "As it relates to the economy, the love of good food is a common bond that unites nations in the reciprocal exchange of everyday foodstuffs. It’s what makes us ship wines, spirits, sweets, spices, sauces, savouries and all sorts of produce—from eggs to melons—all over the world. It’s the reason we set different prices for good, great and indifferent food, whether its virtues are the result of art or of nature. It’s what sustains the hopes of that great throng of fishermen, hunters, farmers and others, who daily supply the finest places through their hard work and discoveries. It’s what keeps alive the industrious multitude of cooks, pastrychefs, confectioners and others, who in turn employ workers of every other sort, and give rise to a constant and continual exchange of currency that no one could possibly measure or assign a value to. And we ought to take note that the culinary industry is supported on the one hand by the very rich, but on the other by everyday need."

Photo: Engraving of Brillat-Savarin, from title page of an 1848 edition of Physiologie du goût, Wikimedia Commons.