Jules Verne at the table

In the 19th century, a French bourgeois family's meal followed a set sequence: a soup to start, a river or sea fish as the "relevé" (next course), a roast of meat, an entremets, and then the sweet dessert — the "service à la russe" (dishes brought one after another, already carved) gradually replacing the "service à la française" where everything was placed on the table at once. Opposite this affluent table from Amiens or Nantes stands a second, much rougher structure: the wardroom and mess of the yacht Saint-Michel, where one eats like a sailor, at fixed hours signaled by the bell, on simple provisions and ship's preserves. This set brings together the two hungers of Verne: that of the settled notable and that of the voyager ready to set sail.

A tinplate can sealed and sterilized by heat, invented by French confectioner Nicolas Appert at the beginning of the century: it is THE quintessential Verne technique, the one that feeds the explorers of his novels and stocks the pantry of his own yacht. Nantes, Verne's birthplace, would become one of its capitals with its sardine canneries. Science that tames time and allows one to travel far: Verne's entire spirit fits in this can.