Gastronomy as a fine art / translated by R.E. Anderson.

  • Brillat-Savarin, 1755-1826.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gastronomy as a fine art / translated by R.E. Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/366
    maitre d'hotel like Vatel, not only by himself or Conde his master, but in the eyes of courtiers, princes, and even the king. She surrounds the death of Vatel with almost as much of the heroic as that of Turenne. Becoming more refined and also more popular under Louis XV., as our author himself tells under the heading “ Philosophical History,” it was during the Begency, and by the systematic application of the chemistry of the period, that gastronomy first had any claim to rank as a science. Surviving the violence and social distractions of the Revolution and the First Empire, gastronomic art acquired new vigour in France after Waterloo, under the active patronage of Louis XVIII., and to the admiration of our appreciative author. No doubt this powerful reaction in favour of his favourite study, occurring during those last years of his life, first suggested to Savarin the propriety of setting down in order his thoughts and conclusions upon an art which had become so important that Lady Morgan, describing the France of that period, calls it “ the standard and gauge of modern civiliza- tion.” Savarin’s qualifications for this task are abundantly proved by his performance of it. His whole life was a preparation; and throughout his work we