There are various modes and hours of taking meals in Paris, depending chiefly on the nationality; for it must never be forgotten that Paris is a cosmopolitan city, and contains large numbers of workmen of German, Belgian, and Italian origin.
The French mode is for the workman to leave home fasting, taking his first two meals at a restaurant or cabaret near the place where he is working. The second meal is eaten about ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, and consists of a plate of meat and vegetables and half a bottle of wine. Any one walking about Paris at this hour of the day must have observed workmen seated alone or in groups at the little tables outside the restaurants, eating their breakfast.
The variety offered and the prices may be judged from the following bill of fare, exposed in a street peculiarly frequented by workmen:
| cents. | |
| Radishes, sardines, butter | 3 |
| Soup | 3 |
| Common wine | 7 |
| Beef | 6 |
| Mutton stew | 7 |
| Leg of mutton | 8 |
| Stewed rabbit | 12 |
| Chops | 8 |
| Goose and veal | 12 |
| Potato stew | 3 |
| Salads and fruits | 3 |
| Cheese and sweetmeats | 3 |
| Coffee | 4 |
The workman’s wife has, with her children, an early meal of milked coffee or soup, the children taking with them to school sandwiches of bread and cheese, or something from the previous day’s dinner. The mother takes a similar breakfast in the middle of the day, the whole family looking forward to the third meal, indiscriminately called dinner or supper, as the principal one of the day. This consists of soup, meat, vegetables or salad, cheese or prunes, and fresh fruit according to the season.
Two or three times a week the kettle is put on, and rich soup and boiled beef obtained. Thin soup is made from the water in which the vegetables have been boiled, or with onions, of which the Paris workman is fond. Wine is generally drunk at supper, but when it is very dear a home-made wine is obtained from raisins, or the wife and children drink water in which liquorice root has been steeped.
Nearly every district in Paris has excellent markets, at which all kinds of meat and poultry, vegetables and dairy produce, can be bought at reasonable prices. There are special days in which it is known certain articles will be fresh and abundant.
In addition to the ordinary butchers’ shops, which in Paris are always peculiarly clean and well arranged, there are special shops for the sale of the flesh of horses, asses, and mules. These shops are called horseflesh shops. There is nothing in the least revolting in their appearance, the joints looking like ordinary meat, only a little darker. It strikes the eye at first as strange to see, “Ass, best quality,” but it is a matter of habit.
The economical wife knows all the various pieces of meat which are nourishing, some of which are little heard of in England, such as beef’s stomach, veal’s mouth, sheep’s foot.
Vegetables are always plentiful in Paris, owing to the quantity of market-garden land round the city, and for the same reason there is a constant supply of salads all the year round, but then the Parisians will make a salad of the leaves of the lamb’s lettuce and the dandelion.