How did the ancients cook? Han Dynasty cookstoves tell the story of ancient dining

The emergence of stoves around the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, "interpretation of the name - interpretation of the palace room," said: "Stoves, make also, create food also." The Han Book - five elements of the Zhi said: "Stove, the birth of the base." Stove with the fire chamber compared to the better performance of airtight, more efficient cooking, energy saving.

The Han Dynasty prevailed in the concept of "death by life", such as Wang Chong "on the balance. Mocking the day article" said: "Push the matter of death, push the personnel ghosts. Seeing the raw people have food and drink, die as a ghost when you can resume food and drink, feeling things think of relatives, so sacrifices are also."

The stove in the Han Dynasty burial tomb found more, ordinary for a stove, complex as many as several eyes. Stove surface generally molded kitchen tools and chicken, duck, fish and meat and other food, the side of the characters, dragons, tigers and monsters, kitchen and other content.

Han Dynasty tombs buried with the pottery stove in different forms, from the stove shape, there are rectangular, square, round, horseshoe, arch, etc., from the texture and glaze color, there are gray ceramic, red ceramic, black ceramic, green glazed ceramics, yellow glazed ceramics, reddish-red glazed ceramics, overlaying colored ceramics, etc., the door of the stove has a square hole, arched holes, there is a floor or a landing, the kettle eye has a single eye, double eyes, triple eyes and even more than one eye. Stove surface decorative content is also very rich, usually molded with chicken, duck, fish, meat, turtle and other types of food and bowls, plates, knives, hooks, shovels, spoons, scoops and other cooking utensils; stove wall engraved with dragons and tigers, monsters, cooks and so on. Modeling vivid and realistic, with a strong sense of life.

From this, we can at least understand that the food eaten by the Han Dynasty people have no difference with today's people, the way of eating and we are not the same, the Han Dynasty cookware is more diversified, it seems that the Han Dynasty fried has been very popular.

In April 2018, Gongyi City, East District, a construction project site of the Han Tomb excavation unearthed a stone stove, the stove shape is unique, for the Gongyi region has been rare.

The stove is sandstone, 54cm long, 28.5cm wide, 20cm high, irregular shape, like a boat. The whole is divided into two parts: the stove and the platform in front of the stove. The platform in front of the stove is surrounded by a guardrail, and there is a diamond-shaped line engraved on the outside. The stove is 14cm higher than the platform in front of the stove, and the surface of the stove consists of three parts: the stove, the smoke block and the flue. Stove block is trapezoidal, the surface of the pro-stove table is carved with a human head pattern. Stove tail upward, stove on both sides of the Yang carved two rows of wide vertical lines on both sides of the surface is divided into three parts, the internal chisel fine horizontal lines. The door of the stove is rectangular, and the interior of the stove is hollowed out, with a trapezoidal stone filling at the bottom. The bottom of the stove has four feet.

Stove model popular in the Han Dynasty for a variety of reasons, but there are two main points: First, the prevalence of large land ownership of the economy, the big families in the society occupy an important position, because of preoccupation with the death of things such as life, after the death of a large number of buried with a large number of models of the Ming ware to the extravagance in the netherworld of the rich and noble life, the stove for the "birth of this," stove model will be a large number of tombs; Second, the Han social thought of sacrificing the stove prevails, and also promote the popularity of the stove. also promoted the popularity of the stove.

Looking at these various forms of stove and those stove on the surface of the rich food and a variety of processing tools, it seems to be able to see, then that the stove within the burning hot stuff, cooking on the stovetop burst of aroma, accompanied by the stove smoke and filled with the whole kitchen.