Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor Read Online Free PDF

least: miserere mei!
    friend: Gourmands will read you because you do justice to them, because at long last
    you give them the place they merit in society.
    au thor: This one time you’re right! It is incredible that they have been misunderstood
    for so long, the poor fellows! I suffer for them like their own father … they are so
    charming, and have such twinkling little eyes!
    friend: Moreover, have you not often told us that our libraries definitely lack a book like
    yours?
    au thor: I’ve said so… . I admit that, and would choke myself rather than take it back!
    friend: Now you are talking like a man completely convinced! Come along home with
    me and …
    au thor: Not at all! If an author’s life has its little pleasures, it also has plenty of stings in
    it. I’ll leave all that to my heirs.
    friend: But you disinherit your friends then … your acquaintances, your contemporaries.
    Have you enough courage for that?
    Introduction | 13
    au thor: Heirs! Heirs! I’ve heard it said that ghosts are deeply flattered by the compli-
    ments of the living. That is a divine blessing which I’ll gladly reserve for the next
    world!
    friend: But are you quite sure that these compliments will reach the right ghost? Are you
    equally sure of the trustworthiness of your heirs?
    au thor: I haven’t any reason to believe that they will neglect one such duty, since for it I
    shall excuse them from a great many others!
    friend: But will they, can they, give to your book that fatherly love, those paternal at-
    tentions without which a published work seems always a little awkward on its first
    appearance?
    au thor: My manuscript will be corrected, neatly copied, polished in every way. There will
    be nothing more to do but print it.
    friend: And the chances of fate? Alas, similar plans have caused the loss of plenty of
    priceless works! Among them, for instance, there was that of the famous Lecat, on the
    state of the soul during sleep … his life work …
    au thor: That was, undoubtedly, a great loss. I am far from aspiring to any such regrets.
    friend: Believe me, heirs will have plenty to cope, what with the church, the law courts,
    the doctors themselves! Even if they do not lack willingness, they’ll have little time for
    the various worries that precede, accompany, and follow the publication of a book, no
    matter how long or short it may be.
    au thor: But my title! My subject! And my mocking friends!
    friend: The single word gastronomy makes everyone prick up his ears. The subject is
    always fashionable. And mockers like to eat, as well as the rest. And there’s something
    else: can you ignore the fact that the most solemn personages have occasionally pro-
    duced light works? There is President Montesquieu, for instance!
    au thor: By Jove, that’s so! He wrote the temple of gnidus … and one might do
    well to remember that there is more real point in meditating on what is at once neces-
    sary, pleasant, and a daily occupation, than in what was said and done more than two
    thousand years ago by a couple of little brats in the woods of Greece, one chasing, the
    other pretending to flee …
    friend: Then you give up, finally?
    au thor: Me? I should say not! I simply showed myself as an author for a minute.
    And that reminds me of a high-comedy scene from an English play, which really
    amused me. I think it’s in a thing called the natural daughter. See what you
    think of it.
    14 | introduc tion
    The play is about Quakers. You know that members of this sect thee-and-thou everyone,
    dress very simply, frown on war, never preach sermons, act with deliberation, and
    above all never let themselves be angry.
    Well, the hero is a handsome young Quaker, who comes on the scene in a severe brown
    suit, a big, flat-brimmed hat, uncurled hair … none of which prevents him from being
    normally amorous!
    A stupid lout, finding himself the Quaker’s rival in love, and emboldened by this ascetic
    exterior and the nature it apparently hides,