Brillat-Savarin, 1755-1826: The transcendent gastronome

While gluttony is as old as the world, gastronomy as we know it is an art of living that is difficult to trace back beyond the Age of Enlightenment. It has had its inventors, its theorists, its propagators, and in this great conquest of humanity, it is Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) who has, by far, played the leading role.

A magistrate from a long line of jurists from Belley (Ain), a member of parliament, a councilor at the Court of Cassation, a poet and essayist, a polyglot, a talented musician, a loyal and delicate friend, he was a gourmet with encyclopedic knowledge and ever-renewed curiosities, constantly wanting to go beyond habits and conventions, demanding as no one before him had ever been on the quality and freshness of food, on the combination of flavors, on the pairing of food and wines, on the balance of meals and a thousand other things.

The publication of his celebrated Physiology of Taste at the time of his death came at just the right moment to accompany a movement underway since the Revolution: good food was no longer the preserve of the nobility, the bourgeoisie, now in control, also wanted to seize this outward sign of prestige.