ABSTRACT
Taste must not be confused with gastronomy. Whereas taste is the natural gift of recognizing and loving perfection, gastronomy is the set of rules which govern the cultivation and education of taste. Gastronomy is to the taste as grammar and literature are to the literary sense. And this brings us to the heart of the problem: if the gourmet is a delicate connoisseur, is the gastronome a pedant? . . . The gourmet is
his own gastronome, just as the man of taste is his own grammarian. . . . Not everyone is a gourmet; that is why we need gastronomes . . . there is such a thing as bad taste . . . and persons of refinement know this instinctively. For those who do not, rules are needed.
