Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Quotes about Food

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

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

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.

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

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.

Cooking is one of the oldest arts and one which has rendered us the most important service in civic life.

A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. "Much obliged," said he, pushing the plate aside, "I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills."

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

The truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac, but it can upon occasion make women tenderer and men more apt to love.

You first parents of the human race...who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?

Whosoever says truffle, utters a grand word, which awakens erotic and gastronomic ideas.

Gourmandise is an impassioned, rational, and habitual preference for all objects which flatter the sense of taste.

Poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter, or the cap of Fortunatus for a conjurer.

Those from whom nature has withheld taste invented trousers.

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.

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.

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

'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.'

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!

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

For unknown foods, the nose acts always as a sentinal and cries. 'Who goes there?'

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."

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

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?"

Salad freshens without enfeebling and fortifies without irritating.