At the table of a grand bourgeois like Hugo, the meal unfolds in successive courses: starting with soup, followed by entrées and roasts of meat or poultry accompanied by vegetables, then sweet entremets and dessert (fruit, cheese), all washed down with fine wines. Black coffee concludes the meal — or, in Hugo's case, accompanies his long nights of work. Under the Second Empire, service à la russe (dishes brought one after another, already carved) gradually supplanted service à la française where everything was placed on the table at once.

Hugo drank considerable quantities to sustain his nights of writing while standing at his desk. Coffee, democratized in the 19th century, was the fuel of the Romantics and a marker of bourgeois urban lifestyle.