“He was fat, stocky and had square feet and shoulders,” said one contemporary. Balzac himself commented with self-irony: “I am not deep, but very broad.” Caricaturists loved to attack him as the glutton of the city because he regularly devoured vast amounts of oysters, fish, meat, fruit, wine and spirits at “Véry’s”, the hippest restaurant in Paris.

Born in Tours in 1799, the man who was later to become a successful writer in Paris and whose novels would find wide appeal throughout Europe first studied law, half-heartedly assisted a lawyer and published a few novels. But they received no attention whatsoever. He then failed as the owner of a print shop.

He found his voice at the age of 29 and proceeded with unbroken creativity and productivity until his death in 1850. Besides the monumental “Comédie humaine”, Balzac also wrote plays and the occasional text on gastronomy which show him to be an aficionado of all sorts of culinary delights as well as a forerunner of nutrition science.

Balzac was the first writer to dedicate himself to the things which join body and soul. After the war-related deprivations of the Napoleonic era, French gastronomy experienced a renaissance in food culture which was important to Balzac for two reasons: For one thing, the food and drink so expertly portrayed in his novels create an atmospheric density. But they were also an indicator of the social status of his heroes.

While the men were allowed to partake in uninhibited gluttony in order to show their expensively acquired paunches, women were being harnessed painfully into their corsets. But the “galley slave of literature” also suffered bitterly: In his excessive phases of writing the passionate gourmet prescribed himself a meagre diet and homicidal amounts of coffee ...

Text: Thomas Held