Ube Lava Cake and Transcendental Gastronomy

Two weekends ago I went to a bake sale at Archestratus for the new cookbook Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed by Abi Balingit. I bought this Fiesta Fruit Salad pictured below, and a few Lychee Madeleines with Hibiscus Tea Glaze and Dried Rose Petals.

I’m very excited to try making the Ube Macapuno Molten Lava Cake and the Ube Melon Pandesal, among many others.

I also have been reading this book translated from French and published originally in 1825 called The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Philosophy.

Below I have curated the most salient and funny quotes and passages:

• The real enjoyment of eating is a special prerogative of man.

• No matter how gourmandism is considered, it deserves praise and encouragement. 

  • Physically, it is the result as well as the proof of the perfect state of health of our digestive organs.  

  • Morally, it is an implicit obedience of the rules of the Creator, who, having ordered us to eat in order to live, invites us to do so with appetite, encourages us with flavor, and rewards us with pleasure.

• Gourmandism offers great resources to the government: it adds to taxes, to duties, and to indirect fiscal returns. Everything that we swallow must be paid for, and there is not a single treasury which does not owe part of its real strength to our gourmandizing. 

• PORTRAIT OF A PRETTY GOURMAND

  • Gourmandism is far from unbecoming to the ladies: it agrees with the delicacy of their organs, and acts as compensation for certain pleasures which they must deny themselves, and certain ills to which nature seems to have condemned them. 

    • Nothing is more agreeable to look at than a pretty gourmande in full battle-dress: her napkin is tucked in most sensibly; one of her hands lies on the table; the other carries elegantly carved little morsels to her mouth, or perhaps a partridge wing on which she nibbles; her eyes shine, her lips are soft and moist, her conversation is pleasant, and all her gestures full of grace… With so much in her favor, she is utterly irresistible and Cato the Censor himself would be moved by her.