"The German Doctors say that persons sensible of harmony have one sense more than others"
About this Quote
Brillat-Savarin flatters the ear by way of the stomach. Framing his point as something “The German Doctors say” isn’t a citation so much as a culinary sleight of hand: Germany stands in for laboratory seriousness, the white-coat authority that can launder a bon vivant’s prejudice into “science.” The line lands because it’s both playful and hierarchical. If you’re “sensible of harmony,” you don’t just have taste; you’ve been upgraded, granted “one sense more than others.” It’s an aristocracy of perception, expressed with the breezy confidence of a man who believes refinement is measurable.
“Harmony” does double duty. On the surface it nods to music, the Enlightenment’s prestige art, where proportion and balance could be discussed like mathematics. Underneath, it’s a coded defense of gastronomic discrimination: the ability to register how flavors, textures, and aromas cohere, not merely whether something is sweet or salty. Brillat-Savarin wrote in a world newly obsessed with classification - of plants, bodies, and social types - and he applies that taxonomic urge to pleasure. The subtext is social sorting: those who “get” harmony belong to a cultured class; those who don’t are stuck with the blunt instrument of appetite.
Context matters, too: post-Revolution France, where old status markers had been shaken, and taste became a portable badge of distinction. This line is Brillat-Savarin quietly rebuilding hierarchy on sensibility, using faux-medical authority to make indulgence sound like an extra organ.
“Harmony” does double duty. On the surface it nods to music, the Enlightenment’s prestige art, where proportion and balance could be discussed like mathematics. Underneath, it’s a coded defense of gastronomic discrimination: the ability to register how flavors, textures, and aromas cohere, not merely whether something is sweet or salty. Brillat-Savarin wrote in a world newly obsessed with classification - of plants, bodies, and social types - and he applies that taxonomic urge to pleasure. The subtext is social sorting: those who “get” harmony belong to a cultured class; those who don’t are stuck with the blunt instrument of appetite.
Context matters, too: post-Revolution France, where old status markers had been shaken, and taste became a portable badge of distinction. This line is Brillat-Savarin quietly rebuilding hierarchy on sensibility, using faux-medical authority to make indulgence sound like an extra organ.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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