Johann Sebastian Bach at the table

In a Saxon cantor's household like Bach's, the day is structured around three meals: the Frühstück in the morning, often a hot soup taken before the service or class; the Mittagsmahl at midday, the true family meal, hearty on feast days; and the Vesper in the afternoon, a snack of bread, herring, or coffee. There is no strict separation of starter-main-dessert: one serves what the season, the Lutheran liturgical calendar (fast days, Advent, Christmas), and the purse allow, all preceded by a prayer of thanks.

The roasted coffee bean, freshly ground and brewed hot, is Bach's signature: he composed for the Café Zimmermann the famous Coffee Cantata (BWV 211), in which a young girl refuses to give up her cup. Coffee is the black spice of his public life, the thread linking his music to the bourgeois sociability of Leipzig.