Skip to content

The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy

The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy (Everyman's Library Classics Series) Paperback - 2009

by Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme

  • Used
  • very good
  • Paperback

First published in France in 1825 and continuously in print ever since, "The Physiology of Taste" is a historical, philosophical, and ultimately Epicurean collection of recipes, reflections, and anecdotes on everything and anything gastronomical.

Description

Paperback. Very Good.
Used - Very Good
NZ$8.24
NZ$18.05 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 7 to 40 days
More Shipping Options
Ships from World of Books Ltd (West Sussex, United Kingdom)
The BIBLIO Guarantee | Ask Seller a Question

Details

About World of Books Ltd West Sussex, United Kingdom

Biblio member since 2007
Seller rating: This seller has earned a 2 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

In 2002, World of Books Group was founded on an ethos to do good, protect the planet and support charities by enabling more goods to be reused. Since then, we've grown into to a global company pioneering the circular economy. Today, we drive the circular economy through three re-commerce brands: - Wob: Through Wob, we sell. We provide affordable, preloved books and media to customers all over the world. A book leaves our collection of over seven million titles and begins a new chapter every two seconds, enabling more goods to be reused. - Ziffit: Through Ziffit, we buy. We give people around the world the opportunity to contribute to the circular economy, earn money and protect the planet, by trading their unwanted books and media. - Shopiago: Through Shopiago, we help others. By sharing the technology that has grown World of Books Group into the business it is today, we're helping charities increase revenue and reduce waste through re-commerce.

Terms of Sale:

If you are not completely satisfied with your purchase for any reason, simply email customerservice@worldofbooks.com and we will quickly resolve any issues you may have. If you have any other queries about your order, please email customerservice@worldofbooks.com. Our goal is to deliver to our customers the best possible service and we hope your experience of dealing with us lives up to our promise. If for whatever reason we fail to meet your expectations then please let us know.

Browse books from World of Books Ltd

From the publisher

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was born in France in 1755 and died in 1826.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, author of The Art of Eating, was born in 1908 and died in 1992.

Bill Buford, author of Heat, lives in New York City.

Categories

Excerpt

The book is — what? Does anyone know? Intermittently it is an autobiography, but told principally in dinner anecdotes (except one, which is about a breakfast, but so protracted that it, too, becomes dinner). It is not a cookbook, although the next time you are bestowed with a turbot the size and awkwardness of a small bicycle you will know how to cook it (too big to fit in the oven, the sea creature is effectively steamed in the tub). The difficulty is compounded by the book's opening, which invites us to think of it as something it never becomes. In the first two pages, we learn that a meal without cheese is as incomplete as a woman without an eye, a startling comparison to contemplate. We also learn that a dinner is never boring — at least for the first hour; that a new dish matters more to human happiness than the discovery of a star; that if, at the end of a meal, you are sated and slurring, you do not know how to eat and drink; and, most famously, that you are what you eat, a succinct expression of food and identity repeated so relentlessly that it is now a modern advertising banality. These ''Aphorisms of the Professor'' (''to serve as a preamble to his work and as a lasting foundation for the science of gastronomy'') represent a lifetime of one-liners, the stuff that, revised, scribbled into a notebook, rehearsed and repeated over a fortified beverage, kept the bachelor scholar from ever having to dine alone. But after page 2, the aphorisms disappear. Instead, there is history. Should we trust it? The Professor is not an historian. Or is he? There is science, more science than history, actually a lot of science. Do we dismiss it because we know better? Do we? Who is this guy anyway?

Media reviews

“Still the most civilized cookbook ever written.”
—The New Yorker

About the author

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was born in France in 1755 and died in 1826.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, author of The Art of Eating, was born in 1908 and died in 1992.

Bill Buford, author of Heat, lives in New York City.

Hang on… we’re fetching the requested page.