Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Quotes

Sight and touch, being thus increased in capacity, might belong to some species far superior to man; or rather the human species would be far different had all the senses been thus improved.

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 will only observe, that that ethereal sense - sight, and touch, which is at the other extremity of the scale, have from time acquired a very remarkable additional power.

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

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

A meal without wine is like a day without sun

The centuries last passed have also given the taste important extension; the discovery of sugar, and its different preparations, of alcoholic liquors, of wine, ices, vanilla, tea and coffee, have given us flavors hitherto unknown.

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

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

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

Let the progress of the meal be slow, for dinner is the last business of the day; and let the guests conduct themselves like travelers due to reach their destination together.

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

Place a substantial meal before a tired man and he will eat with effort and be little better for it at first. Give him a glass of wine or brandy, and immediately he feels better: you see him come to life again before you.

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

The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.

The senses are the organs by which man places himself in connexion with exterior objects.

I appreciate the potato only as a protection against famine, except for that, I know of nothing more eminently tasteless.

To claim that wines should not be changed is a heresy; the palate becomes saturated and after the third glass the best of wines arouses nothing but an obscure sensation.

Those persons who suffer from indigestion, or who become drunk, are utterly ignorant of the true principles of eating and drinking.

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.

Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.

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

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

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.

The Spanish ladies of the New World are madly addicted to chocolate, to such a point that, not content to drink it several times each day, they even have it served to them in church.

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

The first thing we become convinced of is that man is organized so as to be far more sensible of pain than of pleasure.

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

Dear gourmands! my bowels yearn towards them as a father's toward his children. They are so good natured! They have such sparkling eyes!

To invite people to dine with us is to make ourselves responsible for their well-being for as long as they are under our roofs.

Every cure of obesity must begin with these three essential precepts:discretion in eating, moderation in sleeping, and exercise.

Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating

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!

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

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.

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."

I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills.

Gourmandism is an act of judgment, by which we prefer things which have a pleasant taste to those which lack this quality.

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

It is the duty of all papas and mammas to forbid their children to drink coffee, unless they wish to have little dried-up machines, stunted and old at the age of twenty... once saw a man in London, in Leicester Square, who had been crippled by immoderate indulgence in coffee; he was no longer in any pain, having grown accustomed to his condition, and had cut himself down to five or six cups a day.