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Aesthetics and good food have a lot in common. The whole eighteenth century swung between physical needs and refined tastes, and between hunger and appetite. The theories of Dubos, Voltaire and Diderot are examined here in the light of French nouvelle cuisine’s treatises, which are highly indebted to the principles of good taste. Bourgeois cuisine gradually established itself as a less refined version of aristocratic cuisine, in which the cook is both an artist, playing with flavors, and a scientist, wisely mixing chemical elements so as to obtain new and surprising compounds. A true journey from philosophy to the dining table and back.