The French lawyer and gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin published his reflections on eating and drinking, “The Physiology of Taste,” two months before he died in 1826. His most famous aphorism from the book is “Tell me what you eat. I shall tell you what you are.”
English speakers have boiled down the aphorism even further to state, simply, “You are what you eat.” As it turns out, this has been, in the English-speaking world, the title of various Canadian and British television shows, documentaries and articles about healthy eating and dieting. The basic idea of the production is, “If you eat healthy food, you will be healthy and fit.”
But that’s just part of what Brillat-Savarin had in mind — and, really, not the most important point that he wished to make. The aphorism’s original French helps: “Dis-moi ce que tu manges. Je te dirai ce que tu es.” It’s not “qui tu es” (“who you are”). It’s “que tu es” (“that which or what you are”).
One vowel makes all the difference. Fleshed out by paying attention to the whole of his book, Brillat-Savarin means to say that eating well-prepared, good-quality food, mindfully, with other companionable souls, at the table, makes for a good person, even in a moral sense.
“Tell me what you eat. I shall tell you what you are” is surrounded by — and best interpreted in the context of — the other writing in “Physiology of Taste,” sentiments such as “Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating” and “The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.”
What is important, in the end, is the way that you eat (and, perhaps, cook), in addition to the quality or healthfulness of that which you eat or cook.
What “constructs a corpus” is understood in the entirety of the corpus, over and above the mere digestion of minerals, carbohydrates and the like.
In Brillat-Savarin’s thinking, what we eat marks us as a certain sort of person because it is also how we eat (and cook).
I play with his aphorism to think again about eating and us in order to find out not merely what we are but even more about who and how we are.
“Tell me when you eat. I shall tell you who you are.”: This is about the timing of eating (and of fasting, those times when we choose not to eat) and how they mark or define us.
I speak about our many and different feasts or celebrations and their attendant meals, such as Jewish families’ weekly Sabbath foods, for which the first recipe here would be a common dish. It is cholent, a make-ahead one-pot meal that thousands of Jewish cooks assemble on Fridays to cook overnight “on its own power” so that the Sabbath observers do not flout the rule against working on the Sabbath.
Or take many Italian Americans’ Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, for which the second recipe here conceivably might be one such fish or seafood preparation.
Many of the meals that we eat mark us to be certain sorts of people, distinct from others and as a self-identifying member of a chosen community, clan or family. Or, indeed, a long-standing tradition.
Likewise, so does not eating, such as Catholics’ abstention from meat during Lent, how Muslims fast during Ramadan’s daytimes, Jews on Yom Kippur, or how Ethiopian Orthodox Christian nuns and priests abstain from animal products, oil and wine for 250 days a year. That is a significant amount of identification.
“Tell me with whom you eat. I shall tell you who you are.”: In the same vein, when we gather with certain eaters, as apart from others, we define who we are, whether it be a Rotary luncheon, or a Friday evening after-work pizza party with co-workers, or any number of possible meals for which we say to ourselves “I dine with them, at this table and for this occasion, because they mean something to me, especially in this moment, in a manner that others do not.”
“Tell me how you eat. I shall tell you who you are.”: In his “Comedy of Errors,” Shakespeare wrote that “Unquiet meals make ill digestion.” Fast food, processed food, a bag of Doritos for dinner, eaten mindlessly on the couch in front of a screen — these aren’t eating well. They are mere maintenance and poor upkeep at that.
Further, our food world nowadays comes close to stating something like “We eat how we are” or who we have become — sadly. We maltreat farm animals such as chickens and pigs before we consume them; we eat plants raised on overly tilled, depleted soils from massive monoculture farms; we bandy about terms such as “sustainability” and “diversity,” but do not, in truth, act on them.
What and how we eat not only becomes us, in a material manner, a “construction of a corpus,” it is us, but not in a healthy way.
Slow-cooker Cholent
Adapted from recipes at food.com, cooking.nytimes.com, chabad.org, toriavey.com and in “The 100 Most Jewish Foods,” Alana Newhouse, editor (2019). Serves 6-8.
Ingredients
2 medium yellow onions, peeled and thick-sliced
4 medium yellow or white potatoes, washed but unpeeled, cut into large chunks
1 pound bone-in beef short ribs
1 pound beef shank with marrow bone
4 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
1 heaping cup dried garbanzo (or Great Northern or cannellini) beans
3/4 cup pearl barley, uncooked
1 tablespoon sweet paprika powder (or more, to taste, or a 50/50 mix of sweet and hot paprika powders)
1 tablespoon kosher or sea salt
1 heaping teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon honey (or more, to taste)
Optional: 1 teaspoon each powdered turmeric and cumin
3-4 cups, or more, chicken, beef or vegetable broth
Directions
In the bottom of a slow cooker, arrange snugly the onions and potatoes. Top with the beef pieces and the garlic cloves, evenly distributed. (If in search of additional flavors, you may brown the onions and meat pieces ahead of time in 2 tablespoons cooking oil, atop the stove in a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven.) Scatter about the beans and barley and all the remaining spices and seasonings.
Pour enough liquid into the pot to just cover all the ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 12 or more hours, stirring occasionally (except not stirring at all if observant and preparing during Shabbat). If the cholent dries out, add more water as necessary.
Vegetarian and gluten-free version: Omit the meat and barley. Use water or vegetable broth as the liquid. Add 2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into chunks and 3 stalks celery, sliced into chunks along the bias. Increase the beans to 1 1/2 cups.
To cook in an oven: Layer the ingredients in a large Dutch oven as stipulated, assuring that you use enough covering liquid. Cover and cook at 200 degrees for 12 or more hours.
Arctic Charr ‘en papillote’
Charr is particularly suitable for a “papillote” preparation, a little piscine package of parchment paper roasted a few minutes, then opened at each plate for both heady steam and tasty treat. If you cannot find charr, use a trout or thin salmon filet. Per 1 filet, easily multiplied.
Ingredients
1 large square (15”x15”) parchment paper
1 filet arctic charr, skin on
2-3 very thin slices lemon
1 sprig fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
2 small pats butter
Directions
For each papillote, fold in half the square of parchment paper, then open back up, seam side down. Along and on one side of the seam, place the lemon slices, then a filet of charr skin side down, and along the top of the fish, the sprig of fresh thyme, a pinch of salt and pepper, and the butter.
Fold the paper back over itself, then seal the edge into tight narrow folds, ends twisted, then tucked under to make a leak-proof packet. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and roast at 400 degrees for 12 minutes.
If you wish to add any vegetables to the packets (such as baby spinach, julienned leeks or carrots, asparagus, cherry tomatoes), do so, but add 2-3 minutes cooking time.