My first experience of sanguette (also spelled sanguète) was unnerving. Jeanne Chabut popped out of her front door as I was walking past and said: ‘I’ve got something for you.’ She popped back in again, and re-emerged with a soup plate filled with a mysterious coagulated substance of the most violent carmine-red I had ever seen outside a painting. She explained that it was the blood of a chicken she had just killed, mixed with chopped onions.