The Philosopher in the Kitchen by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
At first glance this book seems like it would be hard to review. What you have is an intellectual’s pontification of food. Being from the time period of middle capitalism, when industry was in full swing, but of the upper classes, most of the knowledge he brings to us is conjecture… that is, his biology, anatomy and chemical analysis only go so far as to talk of macro-structures. Much else is opinion, metaphysics pulled onto observations connected at the macro-level. So in that sense, hardly interesting to us today, given our wider acquaintance of the sciences. But then again, his thoughts serve as a mirror to the values of his day… that is to say, reality only echoed back to him (and us, the reader) his “apparent truth” that he read in the things he wrote. What we get then, is less an encyclopedia of food related relations — but rather we get a slice of the French world view from the position of a gourmand.
There are in this work, the tell tale signs of modernism, of the epic tale. He waxes on food, praises it, sings highly to the gods. In each tale he tells, of class relations, of political opponents, of military men, of husband and wife… their relations take on the “flavor” of how they relate to food. In this sense, Brillat-Savarin says more than he means to say, even as he tries to maximally complete this high tale of digestion and gastronomy… touch every aspect of life… he ends instead of telling us what is important in this lifeworld.
For most of human existence, we have hungered. Our economic and social arrangements all center around our bellies (first and foremost, although of course there are other things that influence these hierarchies). So for the first time, in the middle of the industrial revolution you get the bounty of the Earth, delivered at your door. For the first time, with foodstuffs from Asia, the New World, Africa, the middle East and even in Europe, you get whole mobs of well to do professionals, often with disposable incomes, hungering for sweets and delicacies. This sounds scrumptious until you realize that much of the political instability today is due to vast social and ecology abuse from this time period. Latin America for example, still bears the scars of heavy cane sugar farming. Much of the land in Cuba is left unproductive. This also includes the human misery caused by slavery in service of European tastebuds. As a result of this need for profit and this need for luxury, within this book we get evidence of a bourgeois class not only able to sake their thirst but also create new meals, unheard of delights! Much of capitalism isn’t just greed — its also competition in the social hierarchy of who throws the best meals, who has the best parties, who can afford the most rarest of desserts.
This kind of excess still goes on today, of course, as endangered species are eaten by the wealthy, who can afford profiteers who are willing to break the law for a tidy sum… but back then, regulation was much laxer. So in this book, you get a paralleled description of the excess. On nearly every page, Brillat-Savarin describes the bounty of courses, the mouthwatering meals, the smells, and the skilled preparation of food. Food! FOOD. In the course of waxing about how great food is, he talks about how it relates to nearly everything about the French bourgeois, from dating, to attitudes about what to eat, who is a pig, who is laughable… bad manners in foreigners (mostly British but some American and German, whose nations incidentally are also France’s major economic competitors at this time period)… in essence, Brillat-Savarin classifies people by their attitudes towards food.
In this book, food is the nexus that determines social standing. While Brillat-Savarin seeks to talk about food, about the meaning of it, he ends up telling us instead (although in an excessively ego-centric way) about the people who seek to eat it. Who deserves it? How can you be saved by it? His most hilarious stories are always at the expense of people who lack the class and finesse either to appreciate the meal, or understanding its richness.
In this sense, this book is quite a tale. But you kind of have to read between the lines (a little) to recognize this. In another sense, this book was a boring as hell… probably because I don’t care about his society, his world or his antiquated thoughts! If anything, Brillat-Savarin was most likely a fascinating, friendly and energetic man of his time. But he reads to me as being boorish, childish in his temperament towards others… and not at all understanding of the deeper sensibilities that contextualize his social reality. But we shouldn’t fault this of him… after all, each of us does reflect our origins, or at least where we are right now, in how we think of things, how we write of them and how we choose to identify what aspects of what particular has what meaning to us. This doesn’t mean though, that I should like him.
He does of course, reflect his time period. And in his time, the Earth was limitless abundance, and all the pleasures of capitalism could be lead straight to one’s stomach. People were first learning that greed in the marketplace meant stuffing yourself silly (as it was your right to spend your money as you liked)… all the while impressing your neighbors while you were at it. Obviously today, our world has grown too small to support our appetites…so it disgusts me to read about how people often over ate just to impress others with the ruggedness of their lifeforce… And in that sense, perhaps I envy his innocence, even just a little.
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