Gastronomy means the art of eating, from the Greek, gaster ‘the stomach’, and nomos ‘the law’. It figures once in athenaeus, that general receiving-office of all things concerning food and fine dining in the ancient world, when he suggests it as a title for the poem by archestratus which was actually called Hedypatheia or ‘The Life of Luxury’. The word next appears in 1801, once more the title of a poem, this time by Joseph Berchoux, a Parisian lawyer who scored a massive hit with his poetic canter through culinary history and lucubrations about the good life.
