In À Rebours, the decadent 1884 novel by French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, protagonist-aesthete Jean Des Esseintes composed a ‘music of flavours’.In a closet in his dining room, Des Esseintes installed a ‘mouth organ’ that was connected to a number of barrels of liquors. The stops of the organ were labelled ‘flute, horn, celestial voice’, and so on; each was parallel to …