Beaumarchais at the table

At the table of a Parisian bourgeois of the Enlightenment like Beaumarchais, dishes were not served one after another but in large 'services' placed together on the tablecloth: first the soups and hors d'oeuvres, then the sauced entrées, then the roasts (meats and poultry on the spit), and finally the sweet entremets and dessert with fruits, preserves, and liqueurs. Each person helped themselves from the dishes within reach.

The signature perfume of 18th-century French pastry and sweets, imported by apothecaries and confectioners, it scented creams, preserves, and cups of chocolate alike. A single drop sufficed to mark the elegance of a Parisian salon dessert.