The Physiology of Taste by Brillat Savarin (suggested reading .TXT) 📕

that

was needed at the Tuilleries.

 

New circumstances, the restoration of peace, having again reduced

colonial sugar to a lower price, the French manufacturers lost the

advantages they had gained. Many, however, yet prosper, and

Delassert makes some thousands every year. This also enables him

to preserve his processes until the time comes when they may again

he useful. [Footnote: We may add, that at the session for the

general encouragement of national industry, a medal was ordered to

be presented to M. Crespel, a manufacturer of arrus, who

manufactures every year one hundred and fifty thousand pounds of

beet sugar, which he sells at a profit, even—when Colonial sugar

is 2 francs 50 centimes the kilogramme. The reason is, that the

refuse is used for distillation, and subsequently fed out to

cattle.]

 

When beet sugar was in the market, party men, up-starts and fools,

took it into their heads that its flavor was unpleasant, and some

even said it was unhealthy.

 

Many experiments have proved the contrary, and the Count de

Chaptal, in his excellent book, Chemistry Applied to Agriculture,”

(vol. ii. page 13,) says:

 

“Sugars obtained from various plants, says a celebrated chemist,

are in fact of the same nature, and have no intrinsic difference

when they are equally pure. Taste, crystalization, color, weight,

are absolutely identical, and the most acute observer cannot

distinguish the one from the other.”

 

An idea of the force of prejudice is afforded by the fact, that

out of one hundred British subjects, taken at random, not ten

believe in the possibility of obtaining sugar from the beet.

 

USES OF SUGAR.

 

Sugar was introduced by the apothecaries. With them it was a most

important article, for when a person was greatly in want of any

article, there was a proverb, “Like an apothecary without sugar.”

 

To say that it came thence, is to say that it was received with

disfavor; some said that it was heating, others that it injured

the chest; some that it disposed persons to apoplexy. Calumny,

however, had to give way to truth, and for eighty years this

apothegm has been current, “Sugar hurts nothing but the purse.”

 

Under this impenetrable aegis the use of sugar has increased every

day, and no alimentary substance has undergone so many

transformations. Many persons like sugar in a pure state, and in

hopeless cases the faculty recommend it as a substance which can

do no possible harm, and which is not unpleasant.

 

Mixed with water, it gives us eau sucree, a refreshing drink,

which is healthful, agreeable, and sometimes salutary.

 

Mingled in large quantities with water it constitutes sirops,

which are perfumed, and from their variety are most refreshing.

 

Mingled with water, the caloric of which is artificially

extracted, it furnishes two kinds, which are of Italian origin,

and were introduced into France by Catharine de Medici.

 

With wine it furnishes such a restorative power that in some

countries roasted meats taken to the bride and groom are covered

with it, just as in Persia soused sheeps’ feet are given them.

 

Mingled with flour and eggs, it furnishes biscuits, maccaronies,

etc., etc., ad infinitum.

 

With milk it unites in the composition of creams, blanc-mangers

and other dishes of the second course, substituting for the

substantial taste of meat, ethereal perfumes.

 

It causes the aroma of coffee to be exhaled.

 

Mingled with cafe au lait, a light, pleasant aliment is produced,

precisely suited to those who have to go to their offices

immediately after breakfast.

 

With fruits and flowers it contributes to furnish confitures,

marmalades, preserves, pates and candies, and enables us to enjoy

the perfume of those flowers long after they have withered.

 

It may be that sugar might be advantageously employed in

embalming, an art of which we know little.

 

Sugar mingled with alcohol furnishes spirituous liquors, such as

were used, it is said, to warm the old blood of Louis XIV., which,

by their energy, seized the palate and the taste by the perfumed

gas united to them, the two qualities forming the ne plus ultra of

the pleasures of the taste.

 

Such is the substance which the French of the time of Louis XIII.

scarcely knew the name of, and which to the people of the

nineteenth century is become so important; no woman, in easy

circumstances, spends as much money for bread as she does for

sugar.

 

M. Delacroix, a man of letters, who is as industrious as he is

profound, was one day complaining of the price of sugar, which

then cost five francs a pound, “Ah!” said he, “if sugar should

ever again be thirty sous a pound, I will drink nothing but eau

sucree.” His wishes were granted; he yet lives, and I trust he

keeps his word.

 

Section IX. ORIGIN OF COFFEE.

 

The first coffee tree was found in Arabia, and in spite of the

various transplantations it has undergone, the best coffee is yet

obtained there. An old tradition states that coffee was discovered

by a shepherd of old, who saw that his flock was always in the

greatest state of excitement and hilarity when they browsed on the

leaves of the coffee tree.

 

Though this may be but an old story, the honor of the discovery

belongs only in part to the goat-herd. The rest belongs to him who

first made use of the bean, and boiled it.

 

A mere decoction of green coffee is a most insipid drink, but

carbonization develops the aroma and forms an oil which is the

peculiarity of the coffee we drink, and which would have been

eternally unknown but for the intervention of heat.

 

The Turks excel us in this. They employ no mill to torturate the

coffee, but beat it with wooden pestles in mortars. When the

pestles have been long used, they become precious and are sold at

great prices.

 

I had to examine and determine whether in the result one or the

other of the two methods be preferable.

 

Consequently, I burned carefully a pound of good mocha, and

separated it into two equal portions, the one of which was passed

through the mill, and the other beaten Turkish fashion in a

mortar.

 

I made coffee of each, taking equal weights of each, poured on an

equal weight of boiling water and treated them both precisely

alike.

 

I tasted this coffee myself, and caused others who were competent

judges to do so. The unanimous opinion was that coffee which had

been beaten in a mortar was far better than that which had been

ground.

 

Any one may repeat the experiment. In the interim I will tell you

a strange anecdote of the influence of one or the other kind of

manipulation.

 

“Monsieur,” said Napoleon, one day to Laplace, “how comes it that

a glass of water into which I put a lump of loaf sugar tastes more

pleasantly than if I had put in the same quantity of crushed

sugar.” “Sire,” said the philosophic Senator, “there are three

substances the constituents of which are identical—Sugar, gum

and amidon; they differ only in certain conditions, the secret of

which nature has preserved. I think it possible that in the effect

produced by the pestle some saccharine particles become either gum

or amidon, and cause the difference.”

 

This remark became public, and ulterior observations has confirmed

it.

 

DIFFERENT MODES OF PREPARING COFFEE.

 

Some years ago all directed their attention to the mode of

preparing coffee; the reason doubtless was that the head of the

government was fond of it.

 

Some proposed not to burn nor to powder it, to boil it three

quarters of an hour, to strain it, &c.

 

I have tried this and all the methods which have been suggested

from day to day, and prefer that known as a la Dubelloy, which

consists in pouring boiling water on coffee placed in a porcelain

or silver vessel pierced with a number of very minute holes. This

first decoction should be taken and brought to the boiling point,

then passed through the strainer again, and a coffee will be

obtained clear and strong as possible.

 

I have also tried to make coffee in a high pressure boiling

apparatus; all I obtained however was a fluid intensely bitter,

and strong enough to take the skin from the throat of a Cossack.

 

EFFECTS OF COFFEE.

 

Doctors have differed in relation to the sanitary properties of

coffee. We will omit all this, and devote ourselves to the more

important point, its influence on the organs of thought.

 

There is no doubt but that coffee greatly excites the cerebral

faculties. Any man who drinks it for the first time is almost sure

to pass a sleepless night.

 

Sometimes the effect is softened or modified by custom, but there

are many persons on whom it always produces this effect, and who

consequently cannot use coffee.

 

I have said that the effect was modified by use, a circumstance

which does not prevent its having effect in another manner. I have

observed persons whom coffee did not prevent from sleeping at

night, need it to keep them awake during the day, and never failed

to slumber when they had taken it for dinner. There are others who

are torpid all day when they have not taken their cup in the

morning.

 

Voltaire and Buffon used a great deal of coffee. Perchance the

latter was indebted to it for the admirable clearness we observe

in his works, and the second for the harmonious enthusiasm of his

style. It is evident that many pages of the treatise on man, the

dog, the tiger, lion and horse, were written under a strange

cerebral excitement.

 

The loss of sleep caused by coffee is not painful, for the

perceptions are very clear, and one has no disposition to sleep.

One is always excited and unhappy when wakefulness comes from any

other cause. This, however, does prevent such an excitement, when

carried too far, from being very injurious.

 

Formerly only persons of mature age took coffee. Now every one

takes it, and perhaps it is the taste which forces onward the

immense crowd that besiege all the avenues of the Olympus, and of

the temple of memory.

 

The Cordwainer, author of the tragedy of Zenobia, which all Paris

heard read a few years ago, drank much coffee; for that reason he

excelled the cabinetmaker of Nevers, who was but a drunkard.

 

Coffee is a more powerful fluid than people generally think. A man

in good health may drink two bottles of wine a day for a long

time, and sustain his strength. If he drank that quantity of

coffee he would become imbecile and die of consumption. I saw at

Leicester square, in London, a man whom coffee had made a cripple.

He had ceased to suffer, and then drank but six cups a day.

 

All fathers and mothers should make their children abstain from

coffee, if they do not wish them at twenty to be puny dried up

machines. People in large cities should pay especial attention to

this, as their children have no exaggeration of strength and

health, and are not so hearty as those born in the country.

 

I am one of those who have been obliged to give up coffee, and I

will conclude this article by telling how rigorously I was

subjected to its power.

 

The Duke of Mossa, then minister of justice, called on me for an

opinion about which I wished to be careful, and for which he had

allowed me but a very short time.

 

I determined then to sit up all night, and to enable me to do so

took two large cups of strong