Taste Culture Reader

Carolyn Korsmeyer is Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Perspectives on TastePart I: Taste: Physiology and CircumstancePart II: Taste Cultures: Gustation in HistoryPart III: Eloquent FlavorsPart IV: Body and SoulPart V: Taste and Aesthetic DiscriminationPart VI: Fine Discernments and the Cultivation of TastePart VII: Taste, Emotion, and MemoryPart VIII: Artifice, Authenticity, and ArtistryBibliographyNotes on ContributorsPermissionsIndex

For the “Sensory Formations” series, Korsmeyer has compiled a collection of previously published essays about the aesthetics of taste. She arranges the essays into eight segments, commencing with a scientific review of the biological and physical processes of taste, then moving on to environmental and cultural impacts on how human beings experience and describe the taste of what is consumed. Korsmeyer includes classic writing on taste from Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Franc¸ois Revel, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, as well as works by contemporary food historians such as Sidney Mintz and Darra Goldstein, and food writers M. F. K. Fisher, Margaret Visser, and Amy B. Trubek … Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; faculty and general readers.