The Physiology of Taste

Description

This collection of recipes, experiences, reflections, history and philosophy raises gastronomy to the level of an art. First published in France in 1825, this book reflects a new era in French cuisine: the advent of the restaurant and the freedom of the bourgeois to eat out, selecting each dish with precision and anticipation. The book also includes Brillat-Savarin's views on taste, diet, maintaining a healthy and attractive weight, digestion, sleep and dreams and on being a gourmand.

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was born in 1755 in Belley France, an area renowned for its food and wine. After graduating in law, Briallat-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.