Introduction by Denise Gigante
Romanticism may be associated with gusto, but it has hardly been recognized—at least within literary circles—as the period that saw the invention of the restaurant and a unique, comic-philosophical genre of writing about food. But, in fact, Romanticism was coterminous with, and in many ways emblematic of, the culture of sophistication and social positioning we associate with modern gastronomy.
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Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef by Michael Garval
While largely forgotten today, French-born British culinarian Alexis Soyer (1809-1858), transformed our vision of the chef as a public figure. Like other early celebrity chefs, he first styled himself as a great man of letters, but his dandyism, theatrics, tireless self-fashioning and promotion, and, above all, his widely-read and flatteringly-illustrated books, propelled him toward a new kind of renown. In particular, his humanitarian efforts in the Crimean War, and account thereof in his Culinary Campaign (1857), established that chefs need not pretend to be great writers, to be seen as noteworthy personages—a shift underpinning their later emergence as broadcast stars.
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Tastes and Pleasures by Carolyn Korsmeyer
Despite the prominence of the metaphor of taste in the development of aesthetics, philosophers routinely exclude literal taste from aesthetic theory. This essay investigates the concepts of gustatory and aesthetic pleasure, looking especially at Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste, to interrogate the commonalities and differences between the two sorts of taste.
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Economies of Excess in Brillat-Savarin, Balzac, and Baudelaire by Joshua Wilner
The article examines the relationship between Baudelaire's early essay, "On Wine and Hashish Compared as Means for the Multiplication of Individuality" and Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste, and the role of Balzac's "Treatise on Modern Stimulants" in mediating this relationship. I argue that Brillat Savarin's "transcendental gastronomy" is a theory and practice of excess consumption, notwithstanding its denunciations of excess, and that Baudelaire's writing functions as a hyperbolic exposure of this underlying tendency.
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