Just look at this figure, you may not feel extravagant, but you should know that the monthly income of ordinary people in Qianlong period was about 2 or 3 taels of silver. This obvious contrast shows the luxury of court meals.
Royal feast
The royal families in the Qing Dynasty were all Manchus in the northeast. After they entered the customs, they still followed the Manchu custom in dining, so they only ate two meals a day for dinner. The first meal from 6 am to 8 am is called breakfast, and the dinner from noon 12 to 2 pm is the main meal of the day. Of course, if you only eat two meals a day, you will naturally be hungry. After the main meal, you will also add a special snack, so the time to enjoy snacks is not fixed. If you want to eat something temporarily, the chef must be ready to serve at any time, so the whole chef must be ready to cook at any time.
muddledness
According to the ancestral law of the Qing dynasty, every time when eating, irrelevant personnel must step down, leaving four eunuchs to wait on the meal. There will be an elderly eunuch who specializes in serving cloth dishes. Before eating, eunuchs who wait on food must first check whether the food is poisonous with a poison test card, and then eunuchs can taste each dish and start to enjoy it after confirming that it is nontoxic. It's just that the complicated process of eating every time has already shown the extravagant style of the royal family.
Catering stills in Qing dynasty
The number of dishes per meal is also stipulated. There are usually eight main courses and one side dish. At the same time, the chef will also prepare some porridge soup, up to 20 kinds at a time. Not only that, every time the eunuch gives the order, the imperial dining hall will immediately deliver the dishes, and some canteens of the empress dowager, the toffee and the concubines will also send some delicious dishes.
However, most of these dishes will be wasted. Manchu royal family has its own family rules, and it is absolutely forbidden to eat three dishes at a time. This rule is made because the preferences to be avoided are known to outsiders to prevent people with ulterior motives from tampering with their meals.
Manchu-Han royal feast
In the Qing dynasty, these rulers were the most particular about their food, that is, Cixi. Cixi's daily diet shows the most luxurious side of the royal family. Cixi has a longevity dining hall dedicated to cooking for him. In her kitchen, there are 54 cooking stoves, and each stove is equipped with a special chef. All the above chefs can cook more than 4000 kinds of dishes and more than 400 kinds of snacks. It must have taken a lot of effort to find these recipes and chefs with excellent cooking skills.
Cixi dines.
Empress dowager cixi's ostentation and extravagance at dinner is even far better than previous ones. In her meal, the total number of dishes can reach 150, and more than 20 kinds are snacks such as dried fruits and snacks. Her meals were not put on the table, but were brought to her by the eunuch she trusted, and some dishes were taken away without even moving the chopsticks. It takes so much thought to eat a meal every day, not counting the money spent on every birthday. The standard of three meals a day in Qing Dynasty is really amazing!