Once fire was discovered, the instinct for improvement made men bring food to it. First to dry it, then to put it on the coals to cook.

The number of flavors is infinite, for every soluble body has a peculiar flavor, like none other.

The limits of pleasure are as yet neither known nor fixed, and that we have no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining.

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

I am essentially an amateur medecin, and this to me is almost a mania.

In the centre of a spacious table rose a pastry as large as a church, flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal, on the south by an enormous ham, on the east by a monumental pile of butter, and on the west by an enormous dish of artichokes, with a hot sauce.

'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.'