Physiologie du Gout
Paris: Charpentier Libraire-Editeur, 1840. Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme. Physiologie du Gout. Charpentier, Libraire-Editeur: Paris 1840. 12mo (180x115mm) half-bnd brown calf, marbled bds, [2],[2],455,[5 blank]pp. [BRILLAT-SAVARIN, Jean- Anthelme (1755-1826)] Physiologie du Gout, ou méditations de gastronomie transcendante; ouvrage théorique, historique et a l'ordre du jour, dédié aus gastronomes parisiens par un professeur membre du plusieurs societés savantes. Edition précédée d'une notice par M Le Baron Richerand; suivie de La Gastronomie, poème en quatre chantes, par Berchoux. Paris: Charpentier, Libraire-Editeur, 1840. Printed by H Fournier & Co, Paris. Introduction by M Le Baron Richerand. Includes (pps 370-445) the poem La Gastronomie in four parts by Berchoux [Joseph (1760-1839)]. In French. Duodecimo (180x115mm) half-bound brown calf over marbled paper boards; spine in six compartments, gilt lettered & ruled; [2 blank],[2 titlepage],455,[5 blank]pp. Boards lightly scuffed, edges lightly rubbed; spine head small loss, head of upper joint starting but firm, corners lightly bruised; small closed tear to p.4; very occasional faint foxing; top-edges a trifle dusty; bookplate "Ex libris A. Melly" to front paste-down. An instant success, Physiologie du Gout has never been out of print since. § OCLC records only 6 holdings of this edition, all in Europe.
Second-hand hardcover
Brillat-Savarin was a French lawyer and politician during and after the French revolution. Renowned as an epicure and gastronome, he worked on his Physiologie du Gout, all his life, assembling it just before he died; it was privately published at his expense just two months before his death. Neither a cookery book nor a memoir, it is rather a discussion of the nature of eating in its widest sense. It starts with twenty gastronomical "aphorismes", perhaps the best known being "IV tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are"; then thirty "méditations" and finishes with twenty-seven 'variétés' in the form of anecdotes, adventures, recipes and inventions.
Berchoux (1760-1838) was a French poet who invented the word 'gastronomy' when he published La Gastronomie in 1801. The poem is in four culinary cantos: Historie de la Cuisine (the ancient food of Greece and Rome); Le Premier Service (instructions for the successful conduct of a meal); Le Second Service (advice on orchestrating conversation during a meal including a description of Vatel's demise); and, Le Dessert (dessert, wines, spirits and conversations, praising dining as superior to poetry).
"For the French and outsides alike, this work early attained the status of an exemplary culinary text, perhaps the exemplary text.... the Physiology of Taste civilizes eating. Moreover, it socializes food, and it does so by recounting in story after story our social relations with food.... [it] appears to us today as something of a sociology of taste ahead of its time" (Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 31)
A very good text in a very good sound contemporary binding.
§ Vicaire 117-118; cf. Oberle 153; This edition not in Cagle, Bitting or Simon.
Item #9734
Price: $600.00 AUD