It’s the throwaway lines that offer some of the most arresting moments in Invitation to a Banquet, Fuchsia Dunlop’s love letter to several millennia of Chinese gastronomy. That she once cooked 350 duck tongues for a banquet — in Oxford, of all places; that she had her first taste of fermented camel’s milk at a Kazakh circumcision party in Urumqi; or that Yi Yin, the master chef in the service of Duke Huan, the 7th century BC ruler of the State of Qi (in present day Shandong), was said to possess a perfect palate, but was also said to have made his son into soup to please the boss.
在扶霞•鄧洛普(Fuchsia Dunlop)寫給幾千年中國美食的情書「Invitation to a Banquet」（宴請）中，一些最不經意提到的內容最吸引人。比如，她曾在牛津——一個你意想不到的地方——爲一次宴會烹飪了350條鴨舌；她還在烏魯木齊的哈薩克族割禮儀式上第一次嚐到了發酵駱駝奶；還有公元前7世紀齊國（今山東）國君齊桓公的御廚易牙據說擁有完美味覺，但也據說他爲了取悅齊桓公把自己的兒子做成了肉湯。