Among the working classes of 19th-century Paris, meals were not divided into starter-main course-dessert but organized around an unchanging foundation: soup, taken morning and evening, and bread, present at every hour, which they dipped, recooked, and revived when it had hardened. A main dish (often a piece of leftover meat or offal) appeared only on good days. A hot drink—coffee, chicory—kept the stomach going in between. Everything revolved around frugality and the refusal to waste, the hallmark of a life of privation and sharing.

Nothing is thrown away: stale bread becomes soup, dessert, or binder. This bread economy is the backbone of poor Parisian cooking—and of Louise Michel's table, who gave more than she kept.