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

In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight.

Vegetables, which are the lowest in the scale of living things, are fed by roots, which, implanted in the native soil, select by the action of a peculiar mechanism, different subjects, which serve to increase and to nourish them.

Some dishes are of such indisputable excellence that their appearance alone is capable of arousing a level-headed man's degustatory powers. All those who, when presented with such a dish, show neither the rush of desire, nor the radiance of ecstasy, may justly be deemed unworthy of the honors of the sitting, and its related delights.

The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character.

At the time I write, the glory of the truffle has now reached its culmination. Who would dare to say that he has been at a dinner where there was not a pièce truffée? Who has not felt his mouth water in hearing truffles a la provencale spoken of? In fine, the truffle is the very diamond of gastronomy.

'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.'