“It is the fairest of the Muses who inspires me:  I will be clearer than an oracle, and my precepts will traverse the centuries.”  Beneath his pen, soup, “the first consolation of the needy stomach,” assumes fresh dignity; and even the humble fowl becomes to the cook “what the canvas is to the painter, or the cap of Fortunatus to the charlatan.”  But like the worthy epicure that he was, Savarin reserved his highest flights of eloquence for such rare and toothsome viands as the Poularde fine de Bresse, the pheasant, “an enigma of which the key-word is known only to the adepts,” a saute of truffles, “the diamonds of the kitchen,” or, best of all, truffled turkeys, “whose reputation and price are ever on the increase!  Benign stars, whose apparition renders the gourmands of every category sparkling, radiant, and quivering!” But the true charm of the book lies in Savarin’s endless fund of piquant anecdotes, reminiscences of bygone feasts, over which the reader’s mouth waters.  Who can read without a covetous pang his account of ‘The Day at Home with the Bernadins,’ or of his entertainment of the Dubois brothers, of the Rue du Bac, “a bonbon which I have put into the reader’s mouth to recompense him for his kindness in having read me with pleasure”?

‘Physiologic du Gout’ was not published until 1825, and then anonymously, presumably because he thought its tone inconsistent with his dignity as magistrate.  It would almost seem that he had a presentiment of impending death, for in the midst of his brightest ‘Varietes’ he has incongruously inserted a dolorous little poem, the burden of each verse being “Je vais mourir.”  The ‘Physiologic du Gout’ is now accessible to English readers in the versions of R.E.  Anderson (London, 1877), and in a later one published in New York; but there is a subtle flavor to the original which defies translation.

FROM THE ‘PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE’

THE PRIVATIONS

First parents of the human species, whose gormandizing is historic, you who fell for the sake of an apple, what would you not have done for a turkey with truffles?  But there were in the terrestrial Paradise neither cooks nor confectioners.

How I pity you!

Mighty kings, who laid proud Troy in ruins, your valor will be handed down from age to age; but your table was poor.  Reduced to a rump of beef and a chine of pork, you were ever ignorant of the charms of the matelote and the delights of a fricassee of chicken.

How I pity you!

Aspasia, Chloe, and all of you whose forms the chisel of the Greeks immortalized, to the despair of the belles of to-day, never did your charming mouths enjoy the smoothness of a meringue a la vanille or a la rose; hardly did you rise to the height of a spice-cake.

How I pity you!

Gentle priestesses of Vesta, at one and the same time burdened with so many honors and menaced with such horrible punishments, would that you might at least have tasted those agreeable syrups which refresh the soul, those candied fruits which brave the seasons, those perfumed creams, the marvel of our day!