Among the Gauls, meals are not taken at high tables separated into starter-main-dessert: people sit on the ground, on animal skins or dry grass, in a circle around the fire and the great bronze cauldron. In the center, boiled meats simmer; on the spit, roasted pieces turn. The finest portion — the "hero's portion" — goes to the bravest. Barley flatbreads are broken, cereal porridges are ladled, and beer and mead circulate in drinking horns and shared cups. For a deity like Cernunnos, lord of beasts and abundance, the meal overflows into the sacred: a portion is always returned to the forest, placed in the nemeton or thrown into running water.

The Celtic technique par excellence: boiling meats and cereals for a long time in a communal cauldron over the clan's hearth. The cauldron is also one of Cernunnos's sacred objects (think of the famous Gundestrup cauldron) — a vessel of abundance from which food, like life, seems to flow endlessly.