The Physiology of Taste, Brillat Savarin [the best motivational books .txt] 📗
- Author: Brillat Savarin
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variety of simple flavors, which mixture modifies to such a number
and to such a quantity, a new language would he needed to express
their effects, and mountains of folios to describe them. Numerical
character alone could label them.
Now, as yet, no flavor has ever been appreciated with rigorous
exactness, we have been forced to be satisfied with a limited
number of expressions such as SWEET, SUGARY, ACID, BITTER, and
similar ones, which, when ultimately analyzed, are expressed by
the two following AGREEABLE and DISAGREEABLE, which suffice to
make us understood, and indicate the flavor of the sapid
substances referred to.
Those who come after us will know more, for doubtless chemistry
will reveal the causes or primitive elements of flavors.
INFLUENCE OF SMELLING ON THE TASTE.
The order I marked out for myself has insensibly led me to the
moment to render to smell the rights which belong to it, and to
recognise the important services it renders to taste and the
application of flavors. Among the authors I have met with, I
recognise none as having done full justice to it.
For my own part, I am not only persuaded that without the
interposition of the organs of smell, there would be no complete
degustation, and that the taste and the sense of smell form but
one sense, of which the mouth is the laboratory and the nose the
chimney; or to speak more exactly, that one tastes tactile
substances, and the other exhalations.
This may be vigorously defended; yet as I do not wish to establish
a school, I venture on it only to give my readers a subject of
thought, and to show that I have carefully looked over the subject
of which I write. Now I continue my demonstration of the
importance of the sense of smell, if not as a constituent portion
of taste, at least as a necessary adjunct.
All sapid bodies are necessarily odorous, and therefore belong as
well to the empire of the one as of the other sense.
We eat nothing without seeing this, more or less plainly. The nose
plays the part of sentinel, and always cries “WHO GOES THERE?”
Close the nose, and the taste is paralyzed; a thing proved by
three experiments any one can make:
1. When the nasal membrane is irritated by a violent coryza (cold
in the head) the taste is entirely obliterated. There is no taste
in anything we swallow, yet the tongue is in its normal state.
2. If we close the nose when we eat, we are amazed to see how
obscure and imperfect the sense of touch is. The most disgusting
medicines thus are swallowed almost without taste.
3. The same effect is observed if, as soon as we have swallowed,
instead of restoring the tongue to its usual place, it be kept
detached from the palate. Thus the circulation of the air is
intercepted, the organs of smell are not touched, and there is no
taste.
These effects have the same cause, from the fact that the sense of
smell does not co-operate with the taste. The sapid body is
appreciated only on account of the juice, and not for the odorous
gas which emanates from it.
ANALYSIS OF THE SENSATION OF TASTE.
Principles being thus determined, I look on it as certain that
taste has given place to sensations of three different orders,
viz: DIRECT, COMPLETE and REFLECTED.
Direct sensation is the first perception emanating from the
intermediate organs of the mouth, during the time that the sapid
body rests on the tongue.
Complete sensation is that composed of the first impression which
is created when the food abandons this first position, passes into
the back of the mouth, and impresses all the organ with both taste
and perfume.
Reflected sensation is the judgment which conveys to the soul the
impressions transmitted to it by the organ.
Let us put this system in action by observing what takes place
when a man either eats or drinks. Let a man, for instance, eat a
peach, and he will first be agreeably impressed by the odor which
emanates from it. He places it in his mouth, and acid and fresh
flavors induce him to continue. Not, though, until he has
swallowed it, does the perfume reveal itself, nor does he till
then discover the peculiar flavor of every variety. Some time is
necessary for any gourmet [Footnote: Any gentleman or lady, who
may please, is at perfect liberty to translate the word gourmet
into any other tongue. I cannot. As much may be said of gourmand.-
-TRANSLATOR.] to say, “It is good, passable, or bad. It is
Chambertin, or something else.”
It may then be seen that in obedience to principles and practice
well understood, true amateurs sip their wine. Every mouthful thus
gives them the sum total of pleasure which they would not have
enjoyed had they swallowed it at once.
The same thing takes place, with however much more energy, when
the taste is disagreeably affected.
Just look at the patient of some doctor who prescribes immense
doses of black medicine, such as were given during the reign of
Louis XIV.
The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its
character. The eyes expand as they do at the approach of danger;
disgust is on the lips and the stomach at once rebells. He is
however besought to take courage, gurgles his throat with brandy,
closes his nose and swallows.
As long as the odious compound fills the mouth and stuns the organ
it is tolerable, but when it has been swallowed the after drops
develop themselves, nauseous odors arise, and every feature of the
patient expresses horror and disgust, which the fear of death
alone could induce him to bear.
If the draught be on the contrary merely insipid, as for instance
a glass of water, there is neither taste nor after taste. Nothing
is felt, nothing is experienced, it is swallowed, and all is over.
ORDER OF THE IMPRESSIONS OF TASTE.
Taste is not so richly endowed as the hearing; the latter can
appreciate and compare many sounds at once; the taste on the
contrary is simple in its action; that is to say it cannot be
sensible to two flavors at once.
It may though be doubled and multipled by succession, that is to
say that in the act of swallowing there may be a second and even a
third sensation, each of which gradually grows weaker and weaker
and which are designated by the words AFTER-TASTE, perfume or
fragrance. Thus when a chord is struck, one ear exercises and
discharges many series of consonances, the number of which is not
as yet perfectly known.
Those who eat quickly and without attention, do not discern
impressions of the second degree. They belong only to a certain
number of the elect, and by the means of these second sensations
only can be classed the different substances submitted to their
examination.
These fugitive shadows for a long time vibrate in the organ of
taste. The professors, beyond doubt, always assume an appropriate
position, and when they give their opinions they always do so with
expanded nostrils, and with their necks protruded far as they can
go.
ENJOYMENTS DUE TO THE TASTE.
Let us now look philosophically at the pleasure and pain
occasioned by taste.
The first thing we become convinced of is that man is organized so
as to be far more sensible of pain than of pleasure.
In fact the imbibing of acid or bitter substances subjects us to
sensations more or less painful, according to their degree. It is
said that the cause of the rapid effects of hydrocyanic acid is
that the pain is so great as to be unbearable by the powers of
vitality.
The scale of agreeable sensations on the other hand is very
limited, and if there, be a sensible difference between the
insipid and that which flatters the taste, the interval is not so
great between the good and the excellent. The following example
proves this:—FIRST TERM a Bouilli dry and hard. SECOND TERM a
piece of veal. THIRD TERM a pheasant done to a turn.
Of all the senses though with which we have been endowed by
nature, the taste is the one, which all things considered,
procures us the most enjoyments.
1. Because the pleasure of eating is the only one, when moderately
enjoyed, not followed, by fatigue.
2. It belongs to all aeras, ages and ranks.
3. Because it necessarily returns once a day, and may without
inconvenience be twice or thrice repeated in the same day.
4. It mingles with all other pleasures, and even consoles us for
their absence.
5. Because the impressions it receives are durable and dependant
on, our will.
6. Because when we eat we receive a certain indefinable and
peculiar impression of happiness originating in instinctive
conscience. When we eat too, we repair our losses and prolong our
lives.
This will be more carefully explained in the chapter we devote to
the pleasures of the table, considered as it has been advanced by
civilization.
SUPREMACY OF MAN.
We were educated in the pleasant faith that of all things that
walk, swim, crawl, or fly, man has the most perfect taste.
This faith is liable to be shaken.
Dr. Gall, relying on I know not what examinations, says there are
many animals with the gustatory apparatus more developed and
extended than man’s.
This does not sound well and looks like heresy. Man, jure divino,
king of all nature, for the benefit of whom the world was peopled,
must necessarily be supplied with an organ which places him in
relation to all that is sapid in his subjects.
The tongue of animals does not exceed their intelligence; in
fishes the tongue is but a movable bone, in birds it is usually a
membranous cartilage, and in quadrupeds it is often covered with
scales and asperities, and has no circumflex motion.
The tongue of man on the contrary, from the delicacy of its
texture and the different membranes by which it is surrounded and
which are near to it announces the sublimity of the operations to
which it is destined.
I have, at least, discovered three movements unknown to animals,
which I call SPICATION, ROTATION and VERRATION (from the Latin
verb verro, I sweep). The first is when the tongue, like a PIKE,
comes beyond the lips which repress it. The second is when the
tongue rotates around all the space between the interior of the
jaws and the palate. The third is when the tongue moves up and
down and gathers the particles which remain in the half circular
canal formed by the lips and gums.
Animals are limited in their taste; some live only on vegetables,
others on flesh; others feed altogether on grain; none know
anything of composite flavors.
Man is omnivorous. All that is edible is subjected to his vast
appetite, a thing which causes gustatory powers proportionate to
the use he has to make of them. The apparatus of taste is a rare
perfection of man and we have only to see him use it to be
satisfied of it.
As soon as any esculent body is introduced into the mouth it is
confiscated hopelessly, gas, juice and all.
The lips prevent its retrogression. The teeth take possession of
it and crush it. The salva imbibes it; the tongue turns it over
and over, an aspiration forces it to the thorax; the tongue lifts
it up to suffer it to pass. The sense of smell perceives it
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