La bonne cuisine et le siècle des Lumières

Aesthetics and ‘good table’ have a lot in common. The whole Eighteenth century is swinging between physical needs and refined tastes, between hunger and appetite. The theories of Dubos, Voltaire and Diderot are here examined in the light of French nouvelle cuisine’s treatises, which are highly indebted to the principles of good taste. Bourgeois cuisine has progressively established itself, as a less refined cookery than the aristocratic one, in which, however, the cook is both artist, playing with flavours, and scientist, wisely mixing chemical elements as to obtain new and surprising compounds. A journey from philosophy to the dining table and back