Les Rêvieries du Promeneur Solitaire or Reveries of a Solitary Walker was written in 1776-78, left unfinished, and published posthumously in 1782. It’s composed of ten “walks” or personal essays; the fourth includes the episode about dining in Madame Vacossin’s restaurant, where he shared the cost of the meal en maniére de pic-nic.
French readers, not bothered by the non-standard spelling for pique-nique, would know from experience each guest paid their share, but it is uncertain if the entire bill was shared equally. Spang’s The Invention of the Restaurant discusses this kind of dining style.
What Rousseau ate is unknown. But his preference was for simplicity and economy. “Nothing in my idea, either at that time or since,” he wrote in Confessions II (1903), “could exceed a rustic repast; give me milk, vegetables, eggs, and brown bread, with tolerable wine, and I shall always think myself sumptuously regaled.”
* Also, read about piquenique in Emile and Confessions, Book IV elsewhere in PicnicWit.com. The restaurant episode is famous because Rousseau lied and said no when asked if he had children, and he was the father of five children, all given up for adoption.
Featured Image: Maurice Leloir. Roussea and Madame de Warens . Confessions, IV.
See https://www.rousseauonline.ch/pdf/rousseauonline-0077.pdf; Rebecca L. Spang, “Rousseau in the Restaurant,” The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture. Harvard University Press: Massachusetts, 2000. [Anka Muhlstein’s Balzac’s Omelette takes Strang’s explanation with no credit given.]; Ménage, Gilles. Dictionnaire Du Etymologique De La Langue Françoise. 2 vols. Paris: Chez Jean Anisson, 1694; J.J. Rousseau, Les Confessions, new edition, H. Launette & Cie, Paris, 1889, illustrated by Maurice Leloir