At the table of a late-16th-century gentleman, the meal unfolds in several services placed together on the tablecloth: first the pottages and boiled meats, then the roast (meats and game), next the entremets, and finally the issue de table with preserves and spiced wines. Wine and hypocras accompany everything. In the field, this fine order is reduced to a single broth swallowed between marches.

The juice of green grapes, picked before ripening in the vineyards of Saintonge and Gascony, it is the reigning acidity of French Renaissance kitchens, long before the lemon became widespread. It lifts sauces, tenderizes meat, and awakens fish.