Marsha’s Reviews > The Physiology of Taste > Status Update

This work in which I do honor to you has for its purpose the development for all eyes of the principles of that science of which you are the bulwark and the ornament. I send up in it, therefore, a first wafting of incense to Gastronomy, the youngest of the Immortals, who hardly before she has assumed her starry crown is taller than her sisters.

The pheasant is an enigma whose secret meaning is known only to the initiate; they alone understand how to enjoy it to its full. Every substance has its peak of deliciousness: some of them have already reached it before their full development, like capers, asparagus, young grey partridges, squab pigeons, and so on; others reach it at that precise moment when they are all that is possible for them to be in perfection.

The center of the banquet table is hollow, and leaves a great space filled with a crowd of carvers and servers, who hasten here and there and to the farthest places with whatever anyone may wish to taste. There too are displayed most advantageously everything that Nature in her prodigality has created for man's nourishment, and these richnesses are doubled a hundredfold.

By exhaustion is understood a state of weakness, of languor, and of depression brought about by preceding circumstances which make more difficult the natural bodily functions. There are three such kinds of fatigues, not counting the one which results from hunger. These three are caused by muscular fatigue, by mental labors, and by amorous excesses.

Of course the delicacy of our manners could not let us accept the Roman vomitora; but we have done even better, and have arrived at the same end by a path recognized by our good taste. Such attractive dishes have been invented that they manage to revivify our appetites again and again; they are at the same time so light that they flatter the palate without overloading the stomach.

The greatest service rendered by chemistry to alimentary science is the discovery or even more the exact comprehension of osmazome. Osmazone is that preeminently sapid part of meat which is soluble in cold water and which differs completely from the extractive part of the meat, which is soluble only in water that is boiling.