Physiologie du goût

Paris, A. Sautelet, 1826.
2 vols. (120 x 200 mm) of [1], xiv and 390 p.; 442 p. Red half shagreen, spine ribbed and decorated, title pieces, speckled edges (19th century binding).

First edition and rare first printing (with a typographical error in the address, “E” printed horizontally).

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

Five hundred copies were printed at the author’s expense and released in December 1825.

Brillat-Savarin, who died less than two months after the publication of the volume, would hardly have had time to enjoy the success of his great work.

There is no need to come back to the importance and the history of the work, which we can, however, embellish with a categorical and chilling judgment from one of its illustrious readers, a few years later: “A very famous man, who was at the same time a great fool, things that indeed go together (…) dared, in a book on the Table, (…) to write the following in the article VIN: ‘The patriarch Noah is considered to be the inventor of wine; it is a liqueur that is made with the fruit of the vine.’ And then what? Then nothing: that’s all. You can leaf through the volume, turn it over in every direction, read it backwards, upside down, right to left and left to right, but you will find nothing else about wine in the Physiology of Taste by the very illustrious and highly respected Brillat-Savarin: ‘The patriarch Noah…’ and ‘it is a liqueur…’. I suppose that an inhabitant of the moon or some distant planet, traveling on our world, and tired of his long stages, thinks of refreshing his palate and warming his stomach. He wants to get acquainted with the pleasures and customs of our land. He has heard vague rumors of delicious liqueurs with which the citizens of this globe procured courage and cheerfulness at will. To be more certain of his choice, the moon dweller opens the oracle of taste, the famous and infallible Brillat-Savarin, and finds there, in the article WINE, this precious information: ‘Patriarch Noah’… and ‘this liqueur is made’… This is quite a digestif. This is very explanatory. It is impossible, after reading this sentence, not to have a clear and accurate idea of all wines, their different qualities, their disadvantages, their power on the stomach and on the brain. Ah! Dear friends, do not read Brillat-Savarin. God preserve those he cherishes from useless reading; this is the first maxim of a little book by Lavater, a philosopher who loved men more than all the magistrates of the ancient and modern world. No cake has been named after Lavater; but the memory of this angelic man will live on among Christians, when even the good burghers have forgotten Brillat-Savarin, a kind of insipid brioche whose slightest defect is used as a pretext for a display of stupidly pedantic maxims taken from the famous masterpiece. Three-starred and three-forked suit signed Charles Baudelaire (in Les Paradis artificiels, “Du Vin”).

With all due respect to Baudelaire, The Physiology of Taste is “one of the masterpieces of world gastronomic literature. Along with Grimod de la Reynière, he is the one who has most seriously meditated on the transcendental art of eating well” (Oberlé).

A fine copy; rare in contemporary and quality binding, which is the case here.

Oberlé, Fastes, 144; Heirs of Hippocrates 1128; Vicaire, 116, Carteret I, p. 146-147; Crahan 491.