The Physiology of Taste

THE “Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy” of the immortal Brillat-Savarin constitute a mouthwatering encyclopedia of the table: aphorisms (“Dessert without cheese is like a pretty girl with only one eye”: “A cook may be educated, but a ‘roast cook’ must be born such”), savory anecdotes, gastronomic history and folklore, learned discourse on eels and truffles, culiuan esoterica, a psalmody of great dishes, and sermons on the abuse of food and wine. The meat of our author’s wit and wisdom sometimes floats thinly in a stew of pseudoscientific, pseudophilosophie hokum. But the sympathetic reader won’t mind fishing for the choice morsels.