Gastronomy is the study of the relation between culture and food. It is often thought erroneously that the term gastronomy is only related with the art of cooking (see Culinary Arts). Nevertheless this is a small part of the field of study of this discipline: not always it is possible to be affirmed that a cook is a gourmet. The gastronomy studies several cultural components using as central axis the food. This way are linked Beautiful Arts, social sciences, natural sciences and even exact sciences around the nutritional system of the human being.

From the etimological point of view the word "gastronomy" has not a valid meaning at all since it derives from Greek "gaster" or "gastros" that means stomach and "gnomos", knowledge or law.

A gourmet principal activities are some as tasting, transforming, writing, discovering, linking, understandind, knowing, experiencing and researching foods. Therefore, gastronomy must be understood as an interdisciplinary activity. Under a good observation it will be discovered thatn around the food exist dance, dramatic arts, painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, music, in summary Beautiful Arts. But also there exist physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, geology, agronomy, that is to say, exact and natural sciences. And in addition there is anthropology, history, letters, philosophy, psychology, sociology, on the part of social sciences.

The first formal study of gastronomy is probably Fisiology of taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (last years of XIX century). It is different from the ancenstral traditional cooking receipts books as it studies the relations between senses, specially taste, and food.

See also

• Gastropub