Since ancient times, food has been the most important thing for people, and the imperial family is no exception. The palace diet is exquisite and diverse. The emperors of the Ming Dynasty were well-dressed and well-fed. Needless to say, what did they eat?
According to the "Nanjing Guanglu Temple Chronicles", Zhu Yuanzhang's diet on one day in June of the seventeenth year of Hongwu's reign: Breakfast: fried mutton, fried goose, fried pork with pickled vegetables, and vegetarian vegetables. Clear juice, steamed pig's trotters, twice-cooked pan-fried fish, pork belly, noodles with chopsticks, soft chicken soup, fragrant rice, bean soup, and tea. One ***12 channels.
Lunch: Pepper and Vinegar Shrimp, Roast Goose, Burnt Sheep Head and Hoof, Goose Meat Bazi, Salted Drum and Mustard Lamb Tripe Plate, Garlic Vinegar White Blood Soup, Five-flavor Steamed Chicken, Yuanzhi Lamb Bones, Spicy Paste Vinegar kidneys, steamed fresh fish, steamed gluten with five flavors, lamb crystal horns, silk goose noodle soup, three delicacies soup, black bean noodles, minced pepper mutton, fragrant rice, garlic cheese, bean soup, and tea. There are 24 channels in a ***.
As for the content of the dinner, there is no record in the history books.
There are so many dishes, and the emperor is too extravagant. Can he finish them all? The real situation is that in the early Ming Dynasty, everything was in ruins, and the people from the emperor to the common people were mainly frugal and simple, which was nothing compared to the delicacies of the mountains and seas in the late Ming Dynasty. However, since it is for the emperor, of course Shang Shanjian will make more tricks. One more dish means one more choice. For example, Emperor Chongzhen's diet was too rich, including porridge: steamed fragrant rice, steamed glutinous rice, steamed millet millet, rice porridge, coix seed porridge, Xiliang rice porridge, cold paddy rice porridge, millet and gourd bean porridge, pine nut porridge Gorgon jujube porridge, etc., as well as other pasta, meat, vegetables, and seafood are all placed on the table. You can bring what you like and take the rest to another table. The palace dishes are so rich, are there any other dishes? Of course. Let’s start with staple foods, dishes, seafood, soups, and drinks.
Huang Yizheng during the Wanli period recorded in "Shi Cyanozhu" that there were many types of palace pasta, similar to now, including steamed buns, flower rolls, cakes, flower pies, noodles, etc., which were similar to the pasta market. of. The shapes are more particular. For example, the flower rolls include steamed rolls, Haiqing rolls, and butterfly rolls. There are many types of cakes, such as large steamed bean cakes, Chengsha cakes, sugar cakes, sesame sesame cakes, and pretzel cakes. Flower pies can be used as snacks and desserts. Chrysanthemum cakes, sunflower cakes, hibiscus flower cakes, pomegranate flower cakes, and lotus flower cakes can be made by pounding the flowers into fillings. In terms of noodles, there are noodles, egg noodles, white noodles, etc. In a word, the pasta is rich enough.
Did the emperor of the Ming Dynasty also like to eat fancy rice? There are not many records in the history books, but a kind of "Qingfeng Rice" was proposed separately. Just hearing the name seems very artistic, right? This is a kind of rice that can be used to cool down in the scorching sun: Mix crystal rice, longan powder, borneol powder, and beef buttermilk, put it into a golden vat, then hang it down in an ice pond to cool it thoroughly, and use the conduction method to make cold rice. We all know that pasta is the main food in the north and rice is the main food in the south. Since the Ming Dynasty emperor Zhu Di began to live in Beijing, the staple food gradually became more and more pasta.
There are many types of meat used in meals, including common poultry and exotic animals. For example, goose was a very precious delicacy in the Ming Dynasty and was generally not easily eaten. According to the "Guochao Imperial Meat", there are many ways to eat it: grilled, steamed, pickled, and nearly a dozen ways to eat it. There is also a dish called "Paolong Cooking Phoenix", which is actually made of horse meat and chicken. Horse meat represents dragon and chicken represents phoenix. According to the "Zhuizhongzhi" written by the palace eunuch Liu Ruoyu, the dishes of the first month include: spicy live rabbit, yellow squirrel outside the Great Wall, live shrimp under ice, cold sliced ??sheep tail, fried lamb tripe, pig enema, large and small sausages, strips Oily kidneys, etc. Emperor Chongzhen also had the habit of eating donkey meat.
Strange, why didn’t beef be mentioned? Cows had a high status in ancient my country. The "Tailao Ceremony" of sacrifices was made of cows. Pigs and sheep were both "Shaolao Ceremonies", which were of a lower grade than cattle. As the most important tool for farming, cattle cannot be slaughtered casually, otherwise it will violate the law. In the early Ming Dynasty, beef was not even mentioned in the emperor's royal meals. However, with the development of the commodity economy, cattle can gradually be slaughtered. It is not clear when the emperor of the Ming Dynasty first ate beef. However, at least by the time of Emperor Wanli, beef was already popular in the capital.
As for vegetables, Song Qifeng recorded in "Barnyard Theory" that when Emperor Chongzhen ate, the dining room would traditionally display some coarse vegetables, such as: bitter herbs roots, bitter herbs leaves, dandelions, reed roots, and dragon whiskers. Vegetables, garlic moss, etc., so "folk seasonal side dishes and snacks are also collected." But I’m not sure exactly how to eat it. Should it be eaten with sauce, steamed or stir-fried? There are not many historical records. However, just like now, the emperor's royal meal also selected some seasonal vegetables according to the season, with fresh food available every month and changing every day. The materials are rich and varied.
Most of the food in the palace came as tribute from other places, which caused a problem. Due to the transportation conditions at the time, the seafood and aquatic products shipped from the south were no longer fresh. For example, "Wanli Yehuobian" records: Anchovies from the south of the Yangtze River were transported to Beijing and cooked. The eunuchs used other scents to cover them, and the emperor rewarded them to cabinet ministers for enjoyment. The ministers often couldn't eat them. It was originally a delicacy, but it didn't taste good at all. I can't eat it. Another time, the palace eunuch went to Nanjing for business and asked the chef angrily why there was no fresh anchovy on the menu. The chef said that it was included with every meal, meaning you didn't notice? After taking a look at the results, the eunuch stared at the shad carefully and said that the shapes were very similar, but why didn't they smell bad? July is a good season for eating anchovies, which are produced in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Of course, there is no problem in eating them in Nanjing. However, Beijing is so far away and the heat is unbearable. The southern seafood has already turned smelly.
It shows that the eunuchs in the palace are usually accustomed to strange things, so they are both curious about and unfamiliar with "fresh" shad.
According to the seasons and various places, you can eat tangerines, Zhangzhou oranges, kumquats, Xishan apples, pomegranates, etc. as tribute to the palace. There are more snacks, including various flower pies, sweets, sugar cakes, sugar tea snacks and other snacks, and some snacks are added with honey. The Yuanxiao eaten on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month is made of glutinous rice flour, stuffed with walnut kernels, sugar, and roses, and boiled with wine. It is still more delicate than what we eat now.
There are many soups when serving, such as peony head soup, chicken cracker soup, mushroom lantern soup, pork and dragon pine soup, etc. Some are cold drinks for summer, such as sour plum soup, grape soup, There is a special "spiritual dew drink" such as milk. Several types of rice, such as glutinous rice, old rice, and millet, are boiled in a pot to extract the condensed mist.
Diet therapy and medicated meals are no longer new in the Ming Dynasty. The "Essentials of Diet" written by Hu Sihui, the imperial physician of the Yuan Dynasty, is a high-level health-preserving recipe book. Health-preserving recipes were also popular in the circle of friends of scholars in the Ming Dynasty, and they shared some from time to time. Fresh information, for example, Gao Lian has become a big star in the health circle with his "Eight Notes on Compliance with Health". With all the delicious food mentioned earlier, is the emperor’s way of eating healthy?
Modern nutrition experts believe that red meat such as beef and pork can supplement human body protein, but it is not advisable to eat too much. Increased fat can easily cause fatty liver, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, etc. It is better to cook with less oil, less salt and less sugar. Generally speaking, steaming and boiling vegetables are healthier, and stir-frying with less oil is also acceptable. The least healthy are grilling, grilling, and frying. Such high-temperature cooking can easily produce carcinogens.
The emperors of the Ming Dynasty served mostly meat and less vegetables in every dish, and the cooking methods were as Song Qifeng said in "Barnyard Theory",
Neither steaming nor boiling vegetables The mainstream of the Ming Dynasty emperor's diet, high-temperature grilled food was particularly unhealthy. In addition, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty had a heavy taste in food. Tasteless dishes did not taste good, so they had to have more seasonings. They spent a lot of money to buy sesame oil, soy sauce, sweet noodle sauce and the like outside the palace. According to "Ziuzhongzhi": Ming Xizong's favorite foods are grilled clams, fried shrimps, frog legs, bamboo shoots and chicken breasts. There is also a favorite dish, which is sea cucumber, sole fish, shark tendon, fat chicken, Pork trotters are stewed into a dish. You can imagine how greasy it is. When eating watermelon in the summer, you also need to add some salt and bake it! This tastes unique enough, sweet and salty watermelon? Another example is mentioned in Wang Yuchang's "Chongzhen Palace Ci": Emperor Chongzhen and his queen fasted for ten days every month. They thought the vegetables were bland and tasteless, so Shangshan Superintendent reprocessed the vegetarian dishes: plucked the feathers of the raw geese and removed the intestines and other internal organs. Organs, stuff vegetables into them, take them out immediately after boiling, wash them with wine, and cook them with sesame oil. Only in this way can the dishes pass the test. If vegetarian dishes are made like this, then the dishes eaten on weekdays will definitely be greasier.
The question is, is everyone in the world envious of such a superior imperial meal? For example, the health experts - the scholar-officials from Jiangnan who lived an exquisite and elegant life. Not only were they not envious, they also scorned the emperor's food.
Lu Shusheng praised Beijing cuisine in "Qingshu Bitan":
Do you mean it has any taste? It is all seasoning. Xie Zhaozhe once said that the "delicacies from mountains and seas" eaten by the emperor and Beijing officials were greasy and crude, so what was there to show off? Health experts Gao Lian and Zhang Dai also have similar views. These Jiangnan scholar-officials advocated light diet. Although they were foodies, they ate exquisitely and healthily, making them their own style. The other group is northern cuisine, with heavier flavors and a rough and bold style. Behind this lies the improvement of the life interests of the scholar-bureaucrats and the differences in food customs between the north and the south.
So in summary, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty mainly ate pasta, and their eating habits were greasy and heavy-flavored, which was not a healthy way of eating. Do you still envy the emperor's royal meal?
Reference materials:
Qiu Zhonglin: "The Emperor's Table: The Palace Meal System and Related Issues in the Ming Dynasty", "Journal of National Taiwan University History", Issue 34, December 2004.
Chen Baoliang: "Food and Lifestyle Fashion in the Ming Dynasty and Its New Trends", "Social Science Review", Issue 02, 2002.