《启蒙飨宴》为历史中的食物提供了一种全新的观点，用与菜肴、饮食及食品化学有关的文章作为解开许多现代对旧制度法国社会了解上有争议的关键。作者E. C. Spary 广纳作者、科学或医疗人员所写的文章，文章撰写者包含了医师、诗人、哲学家与剧作家，他演示了公众对饮食的讨论如何被用来表达对文明状态的关心，同时也比较这些讨论如何被用于关心自然、关于个人及国家身分消费的影响和适当的学术形式与实践。
 
这之间，作者投入大量的关注在制造、贸易与饮食摄取，尤其是咖啡与酒精。同时，他也考量到一些特别有争议的议题，像是消化方面的化学与酒精的性质。在本书中，除了有我们熟悉的Fontenelle、Diderot与Rousseau等人，还有不太知名却有重要影响力的人，像是西洋跳棋咖啡屋的老板Charles Manoury、“土耳其特使”Soliman Aga与自然哲学家Jacques Gautier d’Agoty。《启蒙飨宴》既富含娱乐性也深具启发性，对知识传播及科学权威属性方面的讨论都具有原创性的贡献。
 
好评
"Astute and wide-ranging. . . . [Spary] places the ideology of consumption in a realm of deliberate choice, where diet and daily practice were closely tied to a growing global pillage and a globalization with little regard to consequence. The seeds of social revolution were not just among the leaves of books."
(Larry Stewart British Journal for the History of Science)
 
“E. C. Spary successfully demonstrates that food is a serious matter of history, involving learned controversies, commercial networks, medical expertise, and even political stakes. This tasty and nourishing book offers us a fresh and unexpected view on Enlightenment culture and Parisian society and raises this important question: why, after all, do people eat what they eat?”
(Antoine Lilti, École des hautes études en sciences sociales Paris)
 
关于作者
E. C. Spary 是剑桥大学历史学院的讲师。她是Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution 的作者以及Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory的编者之一，这两本作品皆由University of Chicago Press出版。