‘The most civilized cookbook ever written.’ – Anthony Lane Arguably the greatest classic on the pleasures of the table, written by the gourmand who so famously stated, ‘Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.’
First published in France in 1825 and never since out of print, The Physiology of Taste is an historical, philosophical and epicurean collection of reflections and anecdotes on anything and everything gastronomical. Brillat-Savarin, who saw his subject as an aesthetic science, lends his shrewd and witty voice to matters which still resonate today: diet and weight, digestion and indigestion, sleep and dreams, taste and sensibility, and even the rise of the destination restaurant. Yet while he discourses, he entertains, indulging to the full a fondness for aphorisms and an irrepressible urge to digress into intriguing personal reminiscence. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826) wrote the book which made him famous at the end of his life, astonishing those who knew him only as a distinguished judge in the Paris court of appeal. Born in Belley, in south-east France, he lived in violent and eventful times, his legal career being interrupted by the Revolution – in which initially he participated, from which he later had to flee – and exile in America. On return he became an establishment figure, a keen instinct for self-preservation enabling him to survive numerous changes of regime. He was a man of many parts, landowner, one-time mayor, amateur doctor and scientist, violinist, keen hunter, admirer of beautiful women, and author of a handful of pornographic stories. The Everyman edition of The Physiology of Taste reprints the classic translation by M. F. K. Fisher (1949) with its informative and appreciative glosses on Brillat’s text. There is a new introduction by Bill Buford.
