The Physiology of Taste (17 page)

Prosper was as decent a young fellow as he was later to be a good soldier; he not only agreed to the request of his antagonist, who drew as his share the carcass of the still appetizing bird, but with a very good grace he paid both for the turkey and the drinks that went with it.

General Sibuet enjoyed telling of this prowess of his younger days; he said that what he did in sharing the bird with the farmer was nothing but politeness; he insisted that without this he was confident he could have won the bet; and judging by what was left of his appetite when he was forty, there can be no doubt of his boast.

1.
It is amusing to think that this personage was probably Talleyrand himself. Brillat-Savarin was a good friend of his, a trusted
adviser on things gastronomical as well as legal, and the man who became known as a prince among diners owed much to the quiet judge, even to the point of shamelessly paraphrasing one of his aphorisms by writing that the first duty of a statesman is to look well after his own liver. He should know if should any man in the world, but thanks to
THE
PHYSIOLOGY
OF
TASTE
we see that at least once he did not take care of either his own liver or his guests’!

2.
Digestion is one of the most delicately balanced of all human and perhaps angelic functions. Anyone who has ever had a disturbing telephone call, for instance, after a peaceful perfect meal, and has felt his finer nerves start up in outrage at the shock, will agree with this minor profundity of mine and with the neater statement of an American Professor, Charles Townsend Copeland, who once said, “To eat is human, to digest divine.”

It takes divinity of both body and soul to have a human mechanism accept food and assimilate it as willingly as the palate has given it the first password. Any medical textbook can present the clinical outlines of digestion, but not the most prescient psychiatrist has yet been able to pin down the moment at which an honest morsel of beef changes from a young boy’s meat to a madman’s poison. If good digestion be even the outer fringes of divinity, let every mortal strive to reach it …

3.
In cook books written within fifty years of Brillat-Savarin’s day there is no mention of this way of serving mutton. Anything
à la royale
would, or at least
could
, be made into a kind of delicate custard and poached, but it is hard to imagine mutton that way. However, it is equally hard to imagine eating mutton before a capon …

4.
André Masséna (1758–1817) was Italian Marshal of France. His worst enemies could say nothing really bad about him, and Napoleon used him as a tactician even though he was avowedly republican in sentiment. It is said that Masséna’s complete lack of ambition is what saved his neck.

26:
WHAT
IS
MEANT
by food?
Popular reply:
Food is everything that nourishes.

Scientific reply:
Food is all those substances which, submitted to the action of the stomach, can be assimilated or changed into life by digestion, and can thus repair the losses which the human body suffers through the act of living.

Thus, the distinctive quality of food consists in its ability to submit to animal assimilation.

27: The animal and vegetable kingdoms are the ones which, up until now, have furnished food to humanity. The only things drawn from minerals have been remedies or poisons.

Since analytical chemistry became an exact science, great progress has been made in deciding the double nature of the elements which make up our bodies, and of the substances which nature seems to have destined to repair our bodily losses.

The most praiseworthy and at the same time most painstaking labors have been performed, following this double path, and scholars have studied both the human body and the foods by which it restores itself, first in their secondary aspects and then in their basic elements, further than which it has not yet been permitted to us to penetrate.

Here I meant to insert a little essay on food chemistry, and to have my readers learn into how many thousandths of carbon, hydrogen, and so forth, both they and their favorite dishes could
be reduced; but I was stopped by the observation that I could hardly accomplish this except by copying the excellent chemistry books which are already in good circulation. I was also fearful of becoming very dull, and I have limited myself to the use of systematic terms, except now and then for giving a few chemical results in less dusty and more intelligible phraseology.

28: The greatest service rendered by chemistry to alimentary science is the discovery or even more the exact comprehension of osmazome.

Osmazome 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.

It is osmazome which gives all their value to good soups; it is osmazome which, as it browns, makes the savory reddish tinge in sauces and the crisp coating on roasted meat; finally it is from the osmazome that come the special tangy juices of venison and game.

This property is found mainly in mature animals with red flesh, blackish flesh, or whatever is meant by well-hung meat, the kind that is never or almost never found in lambs, suckling pigs, pullets, or even in the white meat of the largest fowls. It is for this reason that lovers of poultry have always preferred the second joint: in them the instinct for flavor came long before science confirmed it.

It is also the infallible goodness of osmazome which has caused the dismissal of so many cooks, destined as they were to ruin their basic soup stock; it is osmazome which has made the reputation of the richest consommés, which once made toast soaked in bouillon a favorite restorative during weakening curative baths, and which inspired Canon Chevrier to invent a soup pot which locked with a key. (It is this same holy Father who never used to serve spinach on a Friday unless it had been cooking since the Sunday before, and put back each day on the stove with a new lump of fresh butter.)
¹

Finally, it is to husband this substance, as yet largely unrecognized, that the maxim has been propounded that in order to make a good bouillon the pot must only
smile
with heat, a truly worthy expression considering the country from which it came.

Osmazome, discovered at last after having for so long delighted our forebears, can be compared with alcohol, which tipsified many generations of men before any of them knew how to strip it naked in the analytical process of distillation in a laboratory.

During the action of boiling water osmazome gives place to what is understood more especially by extractive matter: this last product, reunited with the osmazome, makes up the juice of meat.

Fiber makes up the tissue of meat and is what we see after it has been cooked. It is resistant to boiling water, and holds its shape in spite of having been stripped of a part of its coverings. To carve meat well, care must be taken to have the flesh make a right angle, as nearly as possible, with the knife blade: the meat thus carved will look nicer, will taste better, and will be more easily chewed.
²

Bones are composed mainly of a kind of gelatin and of phosphate of chalk.

The quantity of gelatin in them decreases with the advance of age. At seventy years, a man’s bones are no more than flawed marble; this is what makes them so breakable, and dictates a law of caution in old people to avoid all possible falls.
³

Albumen is found equally in flesh and in blood; it coagulates at a heat of less than 40 degrees: it is what makes up the scum of a soup pot.

Gelatin is found equally in both the soft and cartilaginous parts of the bones; its distinctive quality is to coagulate at room temperatures, and two and a half parts to one hundred of hot water are enough for this experiment.

Gelatin is the base for jellies both rich and meager, for puddings, like
blancs-mangers
, and for all similar preparations.

Grease is a solid oil which forms in the interstices of cellular
tissue, and collects in masses in those animals predisposed to it by art or nature, like pigs, poultry, ortolans, and figpeckers; in a few of these creatures it loses its insipidity and takes on a faint aroma which makes it most agreeable.

Blood is made up of an albuminous serum, fibrin, a little gelatin, and a little osmazome; it coagulates in warm water, and becomes a most nourishing food (for instance, black pudding).
⁴

All these principles which we have passed in review are common to mankind and to the animals upon which he nourishes himself. Therefore it is not too astonishing that a meat diet is above all strengthening and restorative; for the particles of which it is composed, possessing the same characteristics as our own and yet having been made assimilable, can easily be absorbed once more when they have been submitted to the vital action of our digestive organs.

29: However, the vegetable world presents no less variety to our nourishment, no fewer resources.

Starch is a perfect food, especially when it is least mixed with foreign matter.

By this starch is meant the flour or dust which comes from cereal grains, from legumes such as beans, and from many root vegetables, among which the potato at this moment holds first place.

Starch is the base of bread, of cakes, and of thick soups of all kinds, and for this reason forms a very great part of almost every person’s nourishment.

It has been observed that such a diet softens a man’s flesh and even his courage. For proof one can cite the Indians, who live almost exclusively on rice and who are the prey of almost anyone who wishes to conquer them.

Almost all domestic animals will eat starch with avidity, and they are, in contrast, unusually strengthened by it, because it is a more substantial nourishment than the fresh or dry leaves which are their habitual fodder.

Sugar is no less negligible, either as a food or as a medicine.

This substance, exclusive to the Indies and our colonies in the old days, became a native of Europe at the beginning of this the nineteenth century. It was discovered and developed in grapes, turnips, chestnuts, and above all beets; to such an end that, frankly speaking, Europe could in this regard take care of itself and do without either America or the Indies. This is a praiseworthy service which science has rendered to the world, and an example which may well have far-reaching results. (See later, the section entitled Sugar.)

Sugar, whether in a solid state or in the various plants where nature has placed it, is extremely nourishing; animals love it, and the English, who give a great deal of it to their thoroughbred horses, have observed that these creatures fare better than others in tests to which they are submitted.

Sugar, which in the time of Louis XIV was found only in apothecary shops, has given birth to various lucrative activities, such as the making of little frosted cakes, of candies, of heavy liqueurs, and of other dainties.

Sweet oils also have their origin in the vegetable kingdom; they are not pleasant to the taste, except as they may be blended with other substances, and they must above all be considered as seasoning.

Gluten, which is found especially in the residue of wheat flour, helps enormously in the fermentation of the bread of which it forms a part; chemists have gone so far as to ascribe an active animal nature to it.

In Paris one can buy, for children, birds, and even for men in certain districts, cakes in which gluten predominates, thanks to the fact that a part of the starch has been washed out with water.

Mucilage owes its nutritive quality to the various substances which it has collected in a whole.

Sap can become, if need be, a food; this is not too astonishing, since it contains very nearly the same elements as sugar.

The vegetable gelatins which are extracted from many kinds of fruits, notably apples, gooseberries, quinces, and some others, can also serve as a food: they do very well, combined with sugar, but always less so than the animal jellies which are extracted from the bones, the horns, and the feet of calves and from the
essence of fish. This nourishment is in general light, soothing, and wholesome. Thus both kitchen and pantry seize upon it and claim it.

30: There are in fish most of the substances which we have already pointed out as part of land animals, like fibrin, gelatin, and albumen, except for the natural gravy, which is composed of osmazome and extracted essence. For this reason it is reasonable to say that gravy is what differentiates ordinary dishes from a meager Lenten diet.

This last point is still further strengthened by another peculiarity, that fish also contain a large amount of both phosphorus and hydrogen, those most combustible elements in nature. From this it follows that a fish diet is a very heating one, a theory which may well support certain old-fashioned speculations about various religious orders whose supposedly meager regimen was thus directly contrary to the one of their ascetic vows most often broken.