Tell Me What You Eat, and I Will Tell You What You Are

So Popeye is green, slimy and comes in a can, then.

This phrase is a bit of a canard these days, ever since it was adopted as the strapline for mad-as-a-box-of-frogs hardman cooking-comp Iron Chef (starring Mark Decascos, who I have happy memories of since watching Crying Freeman at university, and who has made the leap from martial arts eye candy to terrifying campy chef character in only ten short years). But - here comes the surprise - it doesn't mean what you probably think it does. It's from Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste (1825), which I've previously discussed on these pages. TPoT, as it shall henceforth be known, is intended to be a scientific manual: a study of gastronomy intended to carry the spirit of Enlightenment and the scientific revolution into the culinary sphere, with lots of delightful nineteenth-century windbaggery thrown in for good measure. J.-A. can never resist telling a good story, and some of his anecdotes are actually funny, but his analysis of physiology leads a bit to be desired. 

When J.-A. says 'tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are', although he is making a point about how culinary likes and dislikes can pinpoint you geographically and by social class, like a sort of gastronomic Henry Higgins, he genuinely believed that people's tastes were affected more by their anatomy than their experiences and culture. Take this gem: 

'The persons predestined to gourmandise are in general of medium stature. Their faces are either round or square, and small, their noses short and their chins rounded. The women are rather pretty than beautiful, and they have a slight tendency to obesity. Those who are fondest of friandises [sweet things] have delicate features, smaller, and are distinguished by a peculiar expression of the mouth. Agreeable guests should be sought for among those who have this appearance. They receive all that is offered them, eat slowly, and taste advisedly ... Those, on the contrary, to whom nature has refused a desire for the gratifications of taste, have a long nose and face. Whatever be their statures, the face seems out of order. Their hair is dark and flat, and they have no embonpoint [bosoms].' 

Although J.-A. did say that there were a few gourmands who had, as it were, had gourmandise thrust upon them - those whose professions led them to it (financiers, men of letters, doctors, and devotees, if you are interested, although I've read the explanations why several times and his arguments really don't hang together at all) - fundamentally he reckoned that you were born a gourmand, or not. He wasn't a relativist when it came to tastes food - 'tell me' wasn't a neutral device that would help one to marvel at how it takes all sorts to make a world, as it is often used today, but a way of ranking people by class according to their gastronomic sensitivities (e.g. peasant or blue-blooded gourmand). Amusingly he also proposes 'gastronomical tests' - 'dishes of so delicious a flavor that their very appearance excites the gustatory organs of every healthy man. The consequence is, that all those who do not evince desire, and the radiancy of ecstasy, may very properly be set down as unworthy of the honours of the society and the pleasures attached to them.' 

J.-A. clearly hasn't considered the idea that there may be foreign foods he isn't aware of that taste better to foreign people - that culture and experience plays a role in taste, and that it's not as objective as all that. The food he eats and enjoys is just the best. But then, he was French.