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

being gifted with an infinite

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