PART I. (THE PHILOSOPHY AND USES OF EATING.)
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BY FRANCIS J. GRUND.
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Brillat Savarin, the immortal author of “The Physiology of Taste,” among his axioms has the following: “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai qui tu es.” (Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.) If any one doubt the truth of this remark, or has the least objection to it, he must not read my essay; for I judge him utterly incapable of understanding what follows. It was an equally wise saying of Sir John Hunter, that man was what his stomach made him; but he did not carry his investigations far enough. He had reference to the capacity, and, in case of damage, to the recuperative faculty of the stomach, and did not take into consideration the gentle persuasions of the palate—the sense which is slowest of development, but the most faithful companion of old age. The worthy Englishman had drawn his inferences from the stomachs of the livery and aldermen of London; and his beau ideal, in this respect, was no doubt the stomach of the Lord Mayor. But turtle and venison, though excellent things in themselves, are not the only criterion of rank, fashion, and capacity, though they are the necessary concomitants of magisterial dignity. Brillat Savarin went much further; he classified men according to their dinners; judging thereby of their tastes, their accomplishments, their refinement, and their scientific pursuits. There is, indeed, no function that man performs in common with the beasts, in which he differs so widely from the brute creation, as in eating, which led Brillat Savarin to another not less important axiom: “L’animal se repait, l’homme mange, l’homme d’ésprit seul sait manger,” (which, translated into elegant English, means, animals feed, man eats, but the man of education and refinement alone knows how to eat.)
The savage merely wants his meat coagulated—civilized man wants it cooked; but it requires taste to discriminate between gravies. Gravy is to meat what dress is to man, or rather woman; it not only hides deformities, but sets off and enhances beauty. It dissolves the dissonance which might otherwise exist between boiled and roasted into harmony; it establishes the balance of power between the joints and the petits pieds. Talk of man, in his savage state, appreciating gravy; or the man without refinement discriminating between a common sauce aux capres and one aux truffes, or au vin de champagne! Men, in civilized countries, have immortalized themselves by gravies; and Very—I mean the old man, not his son, who has done nothing in the world to entitle him to respect, except marrying a pretty woman, who never peeled a mushroom—has made gravies with which, as Puckler Muscau said, “a man could eat his grandfather!” The prince, being of half royal descent, meant by his grandfather the beau ideal of toughness.
But I must not shoot ahead of my argument. I am to show that we, in this country, lay too little stress on what we eat—do no justice whatever to cooks, and thereby deprive ourselves of a vast deal of enjoyment that would not interfere with our neighbors. A man who tells you he does not care what he eats, might just as well tell you he does not care with whom he associates. You may depend on it that man cannot appreciate beauty. To him one woman is just as good as another—prose just as good as poetry—the sound of a jews-harp equal to that of a harpsichord. Avoid that man, by all means, or your associations will become vulgar, your taste corrupted, and your appreciation of beauty and elegance as dull as a pair of cobbler’s spectacles.
But there are those who boast of caring naught for a good dinner. They are so etherial, scientific, or Spartan-like, as to be just as well satisfied with a piece of beef as with a pair of canvas-backs. Well, what does it mean? Might a man not, for as good a reason, boast of his blindness, and his stoic indifference as to the color of woman’s eyes, or the incarnation of her cheeks? Might he not as well boast of liking the smell of tobacco as much as that of a rose or a violet? The man who has no taste, has only four senses instead of five, and is therefore defective in organization. What notion has he of a sweet face, a sweet disposition, or a sweet voice?
Taste may be cultivated as much as every other sense. The man who has never exercised his eyes, cannot be a judge of painting, of statuary, or of architecture. The man who has not cultivated his ear, will not easily distinguish between the harmony of Mozart and the tuning of the instruments, which set a musician’s teeth on edge; and a man who has not practiced his sense of touch, will take no more pleasure in taking a lady’s hand, than in handling her glove. Would, can, ought, a lady to give her hand to such a man?
But there is yet another still more remarkable philosophical consideration, which ought to induce us to investigate this subject. What we eat assimilates with us, becomes our own flesh and blood, influences our disposition, our temper, and consequently our amiability. Every living thing in nature longs for incarnation, aspires to become human—to move from its apogee to its human perihelium. But the lord of creation makes his selection; he consults his taste, and admits but few of the aspirants to his intimacy.