The act and appreciation of good food.
Gastronomy is the art and science of good eating, taking its name from the Greek gaster, meaning stomach, and nomos, meaning law. Gastronomy therefore concerns the law of the stomach (just as astronomy concerns the law of the stars). The word originated as the title of a work by an unknown, ancient Greek author, a work that two thousand years later, in 1801, inspired the French poet Berchoux to write a poem entitled Gastronomic. About ten years later, English adopted this word as gastronomy, which soon gave rise to another term, gastrophile, a person who loves his stomach.