Menon had what we would today call a holistic approach to gastronomic practices of his day that went well beyond the preparation and presentation of food. Several of his titles make clear that action, strategy and deportment were just as important. His book were as much about ways of acting as they were about food itself, like style-guides for gastronomic mores and manners. For instance, in his Nouveau traite, there is a diagram showing the careful arrangement of dishes that are described in the course of the books.

"François Menon was the most influential and prolific French cookbook author of the eighteenth century. During his time, today's familiar categories of French cooking were emerging, and Menon was a master of them all: nouvelle cuisine (a term that each generation redefines); haute or classical cuisine; and cuisine bourgeoise. He even wrote the first French cookbook devoted specifically to a woman cook (La cuisinìere bourgeoise)... Menon first described the new cuisine in detail in the third and final volume of Nouveau Traité de la cuisine (New Treatise on Cooking, 1742). In contrast to traditional cooking, he wrote, the key to nouvelle cuisine was delicacy. Sauces were lighter but at the same time more nourishing; seasonings aimed to enhance rather than mask lead ingredients... Menon not only wrote about the practicalities of nouvelle cuisine; he was also concerned with philosophy, linking his mission closely to that of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment: to advance and disseminate knowledge that allows humankind to live in a state of nature perfected." (Willan, The Cookbook Library, pp. 218-19).

Vassallo, Catalogo dei libri esistenti nella pubblica biblioteca di Malta p. 118.