Quick, bring my dessert up! - "The Garden Menu" and "The Philosopher in the Kitchen" are read

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Dr Johnson, a knowledgeable Englishman, said, "I care a lot about my belly, and I don't think anyone who doesn't care about my stomach will care about anything else." Yuan Ming, who was Dr. Johnson's contemporary, was expected to agree with him. At the beginning of the "Suiyuan Food List", Yuan Ming quoted the "Book of Poetry" saying "There is a practice of the beans" to praise Zhou Gong, which means similar to Johnson: Zhou Gong can arrange the miscellaneous food utensils neatly, and naturally he can govern the country in an orderly manner.

Yuan Ming lived in the Qianlong Dynasty, and although he stepped down from his official position early, due to the economic development of Jiangnan at that time, he achieved wealth freedom early by virtue of his talent, reputation and economic acumen. The "Suiyuan Food List", completed in his later years, is the product of a long-term and prosperous life, and is also a glimpse of the prosperous bamboo pipe scoop in Jiangnan during the Kangqian period of the Qing Dynasty. For example, the book says that venison is "tender on top of the roe meat", although the roe meat is "not as good as the work of venison, but more delicate than"; it is said that the pickled civet, after "soaking it in rice swill water for a day", is more "tender and fat" than the ham; it is said that fifty sparrows are simmered, and only "finches and head meat" are served, "sweet and abnormal". Many of the dishes in the book, from turtles, cockle meat, dried clams and other aquatic products, to various tofu vegetables, and "get a dozen chickens to match him" eggplant introduced by Wang Xifeng to Liu Grandma in "Dream of the Red Chamber", they also have to be paired with chicken soup, or simmered or rolled.

Yuan Ming, who grew up in the prosperous world of Taiping, made friends and attended various living rooms and banquets. "Every time he is eaten by a certain clan, he will make the cook of the house go to the other stove and perform the gift of the disciple." For forty years, it has gathered a lot of beauty", so there is a "Food Menu with the Garden". This is a carefully selected food list after Yuan Ming's elegant gathering, and it is also a microscopic record of the heyday of the Qing Dynasty. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the French sinologist Yu Yale introduced the translation of Yuan Ming's poetry into the French world, and when introducing Yuan Ming, he also specifically discussed the wonderful "Suiyuan Food List", calling Yuan Ming "China's Bria-Savari". This title catches people's attention, and Yuan Ming's popularity in the Western world has greatly increased.

This Jean-Antelme Bria-Savari, born in eastern France, is fourteen years younger than Yuan, a lawyer and mayor. During the French Revolution, he went into exile in the United States, where he made a living teaching French and playing the violin. Before his death, he published the book Physiologie du Gout, and since then, "Bria-Savari" has become one of the most important names in the history of Western food culture. Since the first edition of this book, it has been reprinted and translated continuously. For example, the famous contemporary American food writer M. K· Fisher was not the first English translator, but contributed the most important English translation. The New York Times once commented that she was not only translating, but also engaging in dialogue with it.

The book currently has two Chinese translations. The Taiwanese translation follows the original name: "Taste Physiology"; the Mainland translation translates to "philosopher in the kitchen". The author begins by saying that he has long been concerned with the pleasures of feasting, and that the knowledge involved in feasting is by no means limited to cooking: "The interest in this research has made me reluctantly assume the role of chemist, doctor and physiologist, and sometimes even play a small role as an expert scholar." Bria-Savarry likes to discuss this with scientists, "I am most happy to be with them." The name "Taste Physiology" highlights the author's intention: "First, to establish the theoretical basis of gastronomy in order to make it stand on its own in the forest of science; secondly, to define gastronomy and to distinguish accordingly the relationship between food and diet, in which ambiguity is often confusing." Most of the writers whom Bria-Savari liked were contemporaries of the Vanguard of Enlightenment thought, such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Feneron, Buffon, etc., and their arguments were also borrowed from the ideological trends and fashions of the time.

In the first part of the book, "Gastronomic Meditation", the author tries to examine different aspects of diet under the light of reason, such as "on feeling", "on taste", "on gastronomy", "on appetite", "on thirst", "on digestion", etc. In a word, the biggest feature of the whole book is to discuss the things under the stove in front of the hall with a fully armed modern scientific mind.

In "The Theory of Frying", the author unfolds this: One sunny day in May, the sun was soft, and at three o'clock in the afternoon, a professor who "loved to study" and "behaved calmly" called the cook at home to lecture, "Yesterday you went to the triumphal flounder pale, the flesh was loose, and the color was not correct", causing "this unfortunate event" because "you ignored the theory". The author leads to the "chemical theory" of heating - from the different heat capacities of various liquids, to why fast frying can maximize the quality of dishes, and olive oil can not be used to fry food for a long time, otherwise "some of the tissue particles in the oil are difficult to dissolve, so they will be carbonized to produce a scorched smell"... Regardless of the right and wrong of these high theories, the author does think about the "mystery" of diet like Newton and Kepler on physical astronomy.

One of the most obvious manifestations is Bria-Savari's efforts to use new vocabulary, including scientific vocabulary, he describes himself as a "proponent of the use of new vocabulary", greatly appreciates english for being "good at creating new words or borrowing foreign words", and he masters five modern languages, "when I want to express a concept, if I can't find the answer in my French vocabulary, I will find the right result from other languages".

In contrast, although the "Suiyuan Food List" provides a lot of very practical guidance, such as the cooking fire guide listed in the "Fire Notice", the fire is fried, the fire is weak, the fire is simmered, and the fire is dry, but it seems to stop at practicality and lack of questioning of why it is so. Of course, as a gentleman, Yuan Ming values the taste of food and emphasizes the fun of food. For example, his logic of despising hot pot is as follows: "Winter banquet guests, habitual hot pot, noisy to guests, is already disgusting; and the taste of each dish, there is a certain degree of heat, it is appropriate to be wen and martial, it is appropriate to withdraw and add, and it is difficult to make a difference in an instant." He also said that it is not appropriate for guests to feast on "chairs draped in table skirts, and interstitial incense cases", so that they will be impatient, "must be dishes and bowls, scattered and mixed, in order to have a noble atmosphere." In short, Yuan's dietary talk was at the level of empirical interest, and Bria-Savari used all the latest knowledge of the time to study various principles of dietary science. Of course, The Philosopher in the Kitchen is not a "theory book" in today's sense, and the author weaves together recipes, philosophies, histories, anecdotes, and memories in the Montaigne philosophy and Swift ridicule.

Discerning as a money-hearted bookworm, he once praised recipes in the book of Savannah (the old translation of Bria-Savari) in the novel "Cats". But today, it seems that the recipes that Bria-Savari relish relish, somewhat make people feel very nutritious and tasteless. For example, the author said that his friend Mr. Lü Bo was too strict, weak and listless, so he refined a "special stimulant" for Mr. Lü Bo, the formula is as follows: onion, carrot and parsley cut into small pieces, fried in butter until brown, then added sugar, amber, a slice of toast and three bottles of water, boiled for three quarters of an hour, another steamer added rooster meat, beef boiled, accompanied by a sufficient amount of salt, pepper, fresh butter, the meat fried, fried. Then filter out the liquid from the first pot, pour it into the pot of boiling meat, and cook for another three quarters of an hour. According to the authors, "If sugar and amber are not added, the soup has a unique flavor and can be used to make dinner to entertain connoisseur-level figures." When Mr. Luber's doctor heard about the formula, he bowed to Bria-Savari and said that the patient's fever condition would definitely cure the "diet". Doctors advise patients to drink another cup of chocolate the next morning and "remember to put two fresh egg yolks in it."

Bria-Savari said: "The fate of the country depends on what kind of food the people eat". Can such a high-calorie meal be seen as the result of the rapid development of France after the Revolution? Long-term eating in this way is inevitable overnutrition, fortunately, the book also gives a precautionary approach to the "prevention and treatment of obesity".

After the great development of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, especially after the First World War, Westerners who were confused by "modernity" went to the ancient East to find answers; at the same time, the East, which felt backward, also began to learn from the modernization of the West. A large number of international students arrived in the West, and many Orientalists began to study China, opening a new stage of interaction between China and the West. In this context, the English biographies written by the famous British translator Arthur Willy for Chinese literati such as Bai Juyi and Yuan Ming are well received by readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Shi Jingqian's evaluation of him shows the dislocation between East and West at this time: Willy's "China and Japan are benevolent and harmonious." Reading the newspapers of this period intensively, Westerners know that since 1895, China has been torn apart, its lives have been destroyed, and it has suffered greatly from war, while Japan has completely westernized and entered a period of mania and danger after rapid economic growth and industrialization... However, Willie, through his qing shao na yan and Bai Juyi, brings the reader back to the state of etiquette and returns to the era of quite taste. ”

How to escape the painful present and return to the beautiful past, each generation has its own ideas. Balzac is only about half a century behind Bria-Savari, but when it comes to this predecessor, he is just as sad that the good old days are gone. "Their pleasures are tinged with an inexplicable antiquity, and they maintain the nobility of their thoughts and manners, but the young people of today have no scruples in this respect; this elegant tradition of pleasure is unlikely to be reproduced by the present world." Is such an exclamation more suitable for us who are more than two hundred years away from Yuan Ming?

Neither science nor fun may fully explain the appetite and the pleasure of eating. Dr Johnson said: "As a hardcore tea guest, for twenty years, I have served every meal with tea soup, and the teapot is always hot. Tea is used to soothe insomnia at night, tea is used to soothe insomnia at midnight, and tea is used at dawn to greet the morning sun. "Johnson loves tea, Bria-Savary's sister, Paulette Brillat-Savarin, is super dessert control. When she was ninety-four years old, she had eaten half of her lunch one day, suddenly felt uncomfortable, and immediately called out to the housekeeper: "I seem to be out of order, quick, bring my dessert!" (The author is an associate professor at Zhejiang University of Communication and Communication, and is the author of "New Taste: Western Food and Eastern Gradualness and Translation")