Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun at the table

At the refined table of the 18th century, one does not eat dish after dish: all the dishes of a single "service" (soups, entrees, roasts, entremets) are placed on the tablecloth at the same time, arranged symmetrically. Guests serve themselves and pass the dishes. The meal unfolds in two or three successive services, crowned by dessert (fruits, preserves, pastries). Vigée Le Brun, painter of the greats of this world, frequented these elegant tables—and sometimes improvised spectacular suppers like her famous "Greek supper."

Vigée Le Brun's emblematic gesture remains her "Greek supper": to imitate the cuisine of ancient Greece as read in Abbé Barthélemy's *Voyage du jeune Anacharsis*, she had meats and vegetables coated in a sweet sauce of honey and small currants. Honey and dried raisins, sweet and tender, mark all her reception cooking: a taste of an imagined Antiquity rather than mere fine fare.