For years she cooked full time for one family at a time, in their home, every day. Each household brought its own way of eating, and she learned it from the inside: South African one season, Indian the next, a protocol she had never cooked before. Learning the table was the work, and she became very good at it.

Those families entertained, and their guests noticed. People would ask, quietly, whether she might cook for an occasion of their own, a dinner, a birthday cake they had tasted at a friend’s table. For a long time the answer was no, out of loyalty to the family she was with. The interest never faded.

Eventually an introduction came for a single dinner, and she said yes. That family asked her back, then asked for meals through the week, packed in proper glass containers so the food arrived exactly as it left the kitchen. Word moved the way it does among families who share a good thing.

When her last full-time family relocated and she chose to stay, enough people were already asking for her to make it a practice of her own. That is how Cours began, not from a plan, but from demand she had spent years quietly earning.