The Physiology of Taste; Or, Transcendental GastronomyBrillat-Savarin
Philosophy
The Physiology of Taste; Or, Transcendental Gastronomy
Brillat-Savarin
Gastronomy
They are of every class and temperament. Some have nothing salient
either in feature or in form. Their eyes are inexpressive, their
lips pale, and every feature denotes a want of energy, weakness,
and something like suffering. One might almost say they seemed to
be incomplete, and that the torch of their lives had not been well
lighted.
FATTENING REGIMEN.
All thin women wish to be fat; this is a wish we have heard
expressed a thousand times. To render, then, this last homage to
the powerful sex, we seek to replace by folds of silk and cotton,
exposed in fashion shops, to the great scandal of the severe, who
turn aside, and look away from them, as they would from chimeras,
more carefully than if the reality presented themselves to their
eyes.
The whole secret of embonpoint consists in a suitable diet. One
need only eat and select suitable food.
With this regimen, our disposition to sleep is almost unimportant.
If you do not take exercise, you will be exposed to fatness. If
you do, you will yet grow fat.
If you sleep much, you will grow fat, if you sleep little, your
digestion will increase, and you will eat more.
We have then only to speak of the manner they who wish to grow fat
should live. This will not be difficult, according to the many
directions we have laid down.
To resolve this problem, we must offer to the stomach food which
occupies, but does not fatigue it, and displays to the assimilant
power, things they can turn into fat.
Let us seek to trace out the daily diet of a sylph, or a sylph
disposed to materialize itself.
GENERAL RULE. Much fresh bread will be eaten during the day, and
particular care will be taken not to throw away the crumbs.
Before eight in the morning, soup au pain or aux pates will be
taken, and afterwards a cup of good chocolate.
At eleven o'clock, breakfast on fresh broiled eggs, petit pates
cotelettes, and what you please; have eggs, coffee will do no
harm.
Dinner hour should be so arranged that one should have thoroughly
digested before the time comes to sit down at the table. The
eating of one meal before another is digested, is an abuse.
After dinner there should be some exercise; men as much as they
can; women should go into the Tuilleries, or as they say in
America, go shopping. We are satisfied that the little gossip and
conversation they maintain is very healthful.
At times, all should take as much soup, potage, fish, etc., and
also meat cooked with rice and macaronies, pastry, creams, etc.
At dessert such persons should eat Savoy biscuits, and other
things made up of eggs, fecula, and sugar.
This regimen, though apparently circumscribed, is yet susceptible
of great variety: it admits the whole animal kingdom, and great
care is necessarily taken in the seasoning and preparation of the
food presented. The object of this is to prevent disgust, which
prevents any amelioration.
Beer should be preferred--if not beer, wines from Bourdeaux or
from the south of France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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