FoodReference.com - Who’s Who Section
Short biographies of chefs, food critics, cookbook authors, inventors, restaurant owners, etc.

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Who’s Who in Food
Culinary Personalities

• WHO'S WHO -  'B'  • Babcock, Stephen Moulton  • Babinsky, Henri  • Ballast, Louis  • Balzac, Honore de  • Bartram, John  • Battle Creek, Michigan  • Beauvilliers, Antoine  • Bechameil, Louis  • Becker, Franklin  • Beecher, Catherine  • Bellissimo, Teressa  • Birdseye, Clarence  • Blechyden, R.  • Bocuse, Paul  • Bonnefons, Nicolas de  • Bordon, Gail  • Bore, Jean Etienne  • Borlaug, Norman Ernest  • Botherel, Marie, Vicomte de  • Boulanger  • Boulestin, Marcel  • Boyardee, Chef  • Boysen, Rudolph  • Bradham, Caleb D.  • Brady, Diamond Jim  • Brandenberger, Jacques  • Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme  • Brown, Rasshad  • Browns, C. C.  • Burbank, Luther  • Busch, Adolphus

Honore de Balzac

(May 20, 1799 - August 18, 1850)
French author (‘La Comedie Humaine’)

Balzac would lock himself away during creative bursts, drinking coffee and eating only fruit and eggs. When he finally took a break, he was known to consume huge quantities of food.

One report recalls that at the Véry restaurant he consumed at one sitting "a hundred Ostend oysters, twelve cutlets of salt-meadow mutton, a duck with turnips, two partridges and a Normandy sole," not to mention the desserts, fruit and liqueurs he finished up with.