Taste, dregs and the reader’s palate

Meaning

The reader's palate can be clogged by the lees of popular error, while philosophy offers exquisite food and fruit. Taste is here an image for discrimination and receptivity to argument, not advice to sample chymical substances.

The preface's culinary language distinguishes readers prepared to judge from those whose inherited opinions prevent appreciation. Dregs are obstructive in the metaphor just as they obstruct pure substance in the physical account. The offered fruit is the work's intellectual benefit. This analogy helps explain the author's polemic but should not certify his dismissal of opponents: their supposedly corrupted palate is his characterization. Practical experience, probable reasons and ancient authorities remain the explicit tests he asks readers to consider.

The English keeps palate, dregs and food as the linked comparison. Viandes in this context is food more broadly, not necessarily meat, and fruict need not denote a literal fruit ingredient.