El sabor del chocolate

This delicious book takes us to the sensual landscape of the Age of Enlightenment. Like a gastronomic traveler, Piero Camporesi, one of the most original and prestigious Italian essayists, describes a society in full swing in the 18th century with great richness and marvelous details. Under the warm light of chandeliers, we witness the clinking of glasses and the dance of plates in the dining rooms where Europe's elites, obsessed with the search for the exotic and seemingly frivolous, yearned to leave behind the legacy of the wild centuries that preceded favor of a more ethereal and refined way of life. Camporesi examines the move to a much lighter and more functional diet, which emphasized exotic foods such as tea, coffee, and chocolate, free from the heavy meats, strong flavors, and excessively vigorous seasonings (cheese, onion, garlic) that characterized the ancient kitchen, and brilliantly accounts for how this change reflects the profound transformations in fashion and habits that took place in Europe during the Enlightenment. This renewed taste suited sensitive palates, was pleasing to the eye, and perfectly in tune with the new preference for slimness and tight clothing. He also married the poor appetite of delicate ladies, night owls and greedy (but not gluttonous) who chatted until exhaustion in literary salons while savoring a good bowl of chocolate.