The Physiology of Taste
The Chapin Library’s recent acquisition of Physiologie du goût, ou Méditations de gastronomie transcendante by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1825, dated 1826) is celebrated in the March 2010 Williams Alumni Review, available here. This first edition of one of the foundation works of culinary history and gastronomy, one of only two known copies inscribed by the author, came to the Library through the generosity of Bruce Healy, Class of 1968, and his wife Alice, in memory of Alice’s great-uncle, Albert O. Fenyvessy. The Healys have also established a fund for the Chapin Library with which other important books in the area of French cuisine may be purchased.
An essay on the Physiologie du goût by Darra Goldstein, Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Russian and editor-in-chief of the journal Gastronomica, may be read here.
Acquisitions on the Healy Fund complement rare cookery books already in the Chapin, such as the Apicius or De Re Coquinaria of 1541 and more than 500 American cookbooks presented in 1998 by Eleanor T. Fordyce, mother of Robert P. Fordyce, Class of 1956. Comments on the Library’s cookery collection by Chapin Custodian Robert L. Volz may be read here. – WGH
Shown is the Physiologie du goût in its two volumes and contemporary binding.