Jeanne Duval eats between two worlds. On one side, the frugal everyday fare of Latin Quarter artists: you grab what you can at the cheap eateries, share soup and bread at the counter, and when money comes in, treat yourself to a proper dinner with wine. On the other, the memory of the Islands: the sweet and spicy flavors of Creole cuisine, rum, coconut, and calabaza squash. There is no starter-main-dessert here, but a rhythm of scrounging and celebration: the broth that sustains you on lean days, the feast offered on good nights, the sweetness and drink that recall a sun-drenched childhood.

If one flavor marks Jeanne's Haitian side, it is the marriage of hot spiced rum (cinnamon, nutmeg, lime zest) and the orange flesh of calabaza, that West Indian pumpkin that perfumes Creole soups. Two threads linking the Parisian muse to a presumed childhood under the sun of Saint-Domingue.