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

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.