Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Quotes

Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating

I appreciate the potato only as a protection against famine, except for that, I know of nothing more eminently tasteless.

Taste, which enables us to distinguish all that has a flavor from that which is insipid.

All languages had their birth, their apogee and decline.

The number of flavors is infinite, for every soluble body has a peculiar flavor, like none other.

The fate of a nation depends on the way that they eat.

In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight.

Fowls are to the kitchen what his canvas is to the painter.

Those from whom nature has withheld taste invented trousers.

When I need a word and do not find it in French, I select it from other tongues, and the reader has either to understand or translate me. Such is my fate.

Salad freshens without enfeebling and fortifies without irritating.

To invite people to dine with us is to make ourselves responsible for their well-being for as long as they are under our roofs.

Dessert without cheese is like a beauty with only one eye

No man under forty can be dignified with the title of gourmet.

When you have breakfasted well and fully, if you will drink a big cup of chocolate at the end you will have digested the whole perfectly three hours later, and you will still be able to dine. Because of my scientific enthusiasm and the sheer force of my eloquence I have persuaded a number of ladies to try this, although they were convinced it would kill them; they have always found themselves in fine shape indeed, and have not forgotten to give the Professor his rightful due.

To claim that wines should not be changed is a heresy; the palate becomes saturated and after the third glass the best of wines arouses nothing but an obscure sensation.

The destiny of nations depends on how they nourish themselves.

Those who have been too long at their labor, who have drunk too long
at the cup of voluptuousness, who feel they have become temporarily
inhumane, who are tormented by their families, who find life sad and
love ephemeral ... they should all eat chocolate and they will be
comforted.

At the table of a gentleman living in the Chausee d'Antin was served up an Arles sausage of enormous size. "Will you accept a slice?" the host asked a lady who was sitting next to him; "you see it has come from the right factory."It is really very large," said the lady, casting on it a roguish glance; "What a pity it is unlike anything."

In the state of society in which we now find ourselves, it is difficult to imagine a nation which lived solely on bread and vegetables.

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

Some dishes are of such indisputable excellence that their appearance alone is capable of arousing a level-headed man's degustatory powers. All those who, when presented with such a dish, show neither the rush of desire, nor the radiance of ecstasy, may justly be deemed unworthy of the honors of the sitting, and its related delights.

The universe is nothing without the things that live in it, and everything that lives, eats.

Let the progress of the meal be slow, for dinner is the last business of the day; and let the guests conduct themselves like travelers due to reach their destination together.

Gastronomers of the year 1825, who find sateity in the lap of abundance, and dream of some newly-made dishes, you will not enjoy the discoveries which science has in store for the year 1900, such as foods drawn from the mineral kingdom, liqueurs produced by the pressure of a hundred atmospheres; you will never see the importations which travelers yet unborn will bring to you from that half of the globe which has still to be discovered or explored. How I pity you!

All men, even those we call savages, have been so tormented by the passion for strong drinks, that limited as their capacities were, they were yet able to manufacture them.

Poultry is for the cook what canvas is for the painter.

The Spanish ladies of the New World are madly addicted to chocolate, to such a point that, not content to drink it several times each day, they even have it served to them in church.

The torrent of centuries rolling over the human race, has continually brought new perfections, the cause of which, ever active though unseen, is found in the demands made by our senses, which always in their turns demand to be occupied.

An intelligently planned feast is like a summing up of the whole world, where each part is represented by its envoys.

Meals, in the sense in which we understand this word, began with the second age of the human species.

Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.

Nothing is more pleasant than to see a pretty woman, her napkin well placed under her arms, one of her hands on the table, while the other carries to her mouth, the choice piece so elegantly carved.

Turkey is undoubtedly one of the best gifts that the New World has made to the Old.

The senses are the organs by which man places himself in connexion with exterior objects.

The centuries last passed have also given the taste important extension; the discovery of sugar, and its different preparations, of alcoholic liquors, of wine, ices, vanilla, tea and coffee, have given us flavors hitherto unknown.

In the centre of a spacious table rose a pastry as large as a church, flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal, on the south by an enormous ham, on the east by a monumental pile of butter, and on the west by an enormous dish of artichokes, with a hot sauce.

Place a substantial meal before a tired man and he will eat with effort and be little better for it at first. Give him a glass of wine or brandy, and immediately he feels better: you see him come to life again before you.

Beasts feed. Man eats. Only the man of intellect knows how to eat.

Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose.

He who receives his friends and gives no personal attention to the meal which is being prepared for them, is not worthy of having friends.

Those persons who suffer from indigestion, or who become drunk, are utterly ignorant of the true principles of eating and drinking.

In fine, the truffle is the very diamond of gastronomy.

Seating themselves on the greensward, they eat while the corks fly and there is talk, laughter and merriment, and perfect freedom, for the universe is their drawing room and the sun their lamp. Besides, they have appetite, Nature's special gift, which lends to such a meal a vivacity unknown indoors, however beautiful the surroundings.

The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.

The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star.

Alcohol carries the pleasures of the palate to their highest degree.

A meal without wine is like a day without sun

The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them.

The sense of smell explores; deleterious substances almost always have an unpleasant smell.

To know how to eat well, one must first know how to wait.

Vegetables, which are the lowest in the scale of living things, are fed by roots, which, implanted in the native soil, select by the action of a peculiar mechanism, different subjects, which serve to increase and to nourish them.

The limits of pleasures are as yet neither known nor fixed, and we have no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining.

1: There are at least six of them: Sight, which embraces space itself, and tells us by means of light of the existence of the objects which surround us, and of their colors. Hearing, which absorbs through the air the vibrations caused by agreeably resonant or merely noisy bodies. Smell, by means of which we savor all odorous things. Taste, by which we appreciate whatever is palatable or only edible. Touch, by which we are made aware of the surfaces and the textures of objects. Finally physical desire, which draws the two sexes together so that they may procreate.

Every cure of obesity must begin with these three essential precepts:discretion in eating, moderation in sleeping, and exercise ...

Gluttony is mankind's exclusive prerogative.

The world is nothing without life, and all that lives takes nourishment.

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

Those truffled turkeys, of which the reputation and the price are still increasing, appear like beneficient stars, and make the eyes sparkle of all sorts of gourmands of every category, whilst their faces beam with delight and they themselves dance with pleasure.

I am a strong partisan of second causes, and I believe firmly that the entire gallinaceous order has been merely created to furnish our larders and our banquets.

Truffle isn't exactly aphrodisiac but under certain circumstances it tends to make women more tender and men more likable

I am essentially an amateur medecin, and this to me is almost a mania.

'Monsieur,' Madame d'Arestel, Superior of the convent of the Visitation at Belley, once said to me more than fifty years ago, 'whenever you want to have a really good cup of chocolate, make it the day before, in a porcelain coffeepot, and let it set. The night's rest will concentrate it and give it a velvety quality which will make it better. Our good God cannot possibly take offense at this little refinement, since he himself is everything that is most perfect.'

Frying gives cooks numerous ways of concealing what appeared the day before and in a pinch facilitates sudden demands, for it takes little more time to fry a four-pound carp than to boil an egg.

Burgundy makes you think of silly things; Bordeaux makes you talk about them, and Champagne makes you do them.

A connoisseur of gastronomy was congratulated on his appointment as a director of indirect contributions at Periguex: and, above all, in the pleasure there would be in living in the midst of good cheer, in the country of truffles, partridges, truffled turkeys, and so forth. "Alas!" replied with a sigh the sad gastronomer, "can one really live at all in a country where there is no fresh sea-fish?"

Gourmandism is an act of judgment, by which we prefer things which have a pleasant taste to those which lack this quality.

The pleasures of the table belong to all times and ages, to every country and every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, outlast them, and remain to console us for their loss.

I will only observe, that that ethereal sense - sight, and touch, which is at the other extremity of the scale, have from time acquired a very remarkable additional power.

The way in which meals are enjoyed is very important to the happiness of life.6

It has been shown as proof positive that carefully prepared chocolate is as healthful a food as it is pleasant; that it is nourishing and easily digested ... that it is above all helpful to people who must do a great deal of mental work.

The German Doctors say that persons sensible of harmony have one sense more than others.

If any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have become temporarily dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate ... and marvels will be performed.