Alfred de Musset at the table

In Musset's bourgeois Paris, dishes were not arranged as starter-main-dessert served one after another. Several dishes were placed on the table at once ("service à la française"): first soups and removes, then entrées and sweet or savory entremets set out simultaneously, each person helping themselves. Added to this was the nightlife typical of the Romantics: the after-theatre supper in the private dining rooms of Palais-Royal restaurants, coffee and its "green hour" of absinthe in the late afternoon, and long salon receptions where champagne flowed freely.

The emblematic ingredient of Musset's Romantic bohemia is absinthe, whose bitterness is tamed by cold water dripped drop by drop over a sugar cube. More broadly, it is the bourgeois art of worked sugar (Carême, charlottes, ice creams) and of long, patient broth that marks this table.