Albert Camus at the table

In the French Algeria of Camus's childhood, meals were not separated into starter-main-dessert: instead, a mixed table was shared, where Spain, Malta, Italy, the Arab-Berber world, and France came together. The meal was built around a common foundation—olive oil, bread, sun-ripened vegetables—and stretched into all hours with a street-bought snack or a strong coffee. The frugality of the working-class Belcourt neighborhood coexisted, on feast days, with the fragrant cakes of grand Sunday outings.

The common thread throughout Camus's cuisine: olive oil from the Sahel of Algiers binds vegetables, browns eggs, perfumes bread. Camus made it the sensual emblem of his "thought of noon"—a cuisine of sun, poor but luminous.