Cixi has to serve a whole hundred dishes every time she eats. What is a hundred dishes? It is estimated that most people need a meter telescope to see it. Empress Dowager Cixi once went to Fengtian by train. There were fifty stoves on the train. Each stove is equipped with a chef who cooks two dishes at a time. Because sometimes it takes two to three days to cook a dish. Empress Dowager Cixi likes ducks, and it takes two to three days for a chef to stew a duck. Every stove should be equipped with a small kitchen to make a fire. So as soon as the Queen Mother said she was hungry, fifty chefs started fanning the fire with banana fans. Of course, each stove should be equipped with several miscellaneous kitchens. For example, if the Queen Mother wants to eat bean sprouts, someone needs to pick them one by one and remove all the whiskers from the bean sprouts. At the same time, she can't break the bean sprouts by herself. ...
Cixi is a famous "luxury queen mother". However, as Ms. Carr, an American painter who once painted Cixi, said in The Picture of Cixi, the dignity of Emperor China is second only to heaven. Those who serve dogs and horses are naturally extravagant, lest the winner favor them. The emperor thinks that he is the son of heaven, rich in the world, and has nothing to do with offering millions of gold. Therefore, the extravagant habits of the palace have always been like this, not just the Empress Dowager Cixi. There are many disclosures in historical materials about the specific situation of Cixi's daily life.
In the Qing Dynasty, the institutions that managed the emperor's diet included imperial dining room, imperial tea room, inner cake room, wine and vinegar room and grain warehouse. Among them, there are more than 370 people and dozens of eunuchs in the Imperial Dining Hall alone. There are rules about the diet in the palace. The emperor's daily food is: 22 kg of meat, vegetable meat 15 kg, lard 1 kg, 2 sheep, 5 chickens, 3 ducks, seasonal vegetables 19 kg, 60 radishes, 5 kohlrabi, 5 cabbages and 6 kg of onions. Seasoning yuquan wine four liang, sauce and clear sauce each three jins, vinegar two jins. There are also eight plates of 240 kinds of cakes, 32 kilograms of white flour, 8 kilograms of sesame oil, 6 kilograms of white sugar walnuts and black dates, and a number of sesame seeds and sand oranges. Empresses, concubines, princes, etc. The following imperial concubine is decreasing. If there are no special circumstances, it should be supplied strictly according to the situation, and it is not allowed to increase or decrease without authorization. The main meals in the palace are breakfast (6: 00 am to 7: 00 am) and dinner (12 to 2: 00 pm). There is a delay at 6: 00 pm, and meals are added at other times. The imperial dining list should be drawn up by the imperial dining room before the number of meals eaten by the emperor, submitted to the competent minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for examination and approval, and then prepared according to the list. The emperor eats alone. When eating, the guards send the food to the chef, who puts the food on the lunch box or dining table and carries it to the dining place by the guards. The eunuch arranged the dishes according to the regulations, and the emperor checked the rice (inserted the silver plate) and tasted it before using it. When eating, the emperor sat in a position facing south, in front of which was a rectangular dining table with two floors. The table was filled with exquisite utensils and dishes, and the eunuch announced the names of the dishes. If the emperor likes something, the eunuch will put it in the emperor's dish.
Empress dowager cixi ate in the same way as the emperor. The Imperial Chef gathered the best chefs in the country, and also purchased "eight treasures of birds", "eight treasures of sea" and "eight treasures of grass" from all over the country to make the best famous dishes in the country for the emperor to enjoy. When Cixi was in power, the chef prepared various dishes and snacks for her. Have two meals a day, and serve 100 bowls of different dishes as required. There are two other "snacks" with at least 20 bowls of dishes, usually around 40 to 50 bowls. Cixi once went to Fengtian by train, and the temporary kitchen occupied four carriages, one of which had fifty stoves, each of which was responsible for cooking two kinds of dishes. * * * used one hundred chefs, and the chores were different. Prepare 100 kinds of main courses and 100 kinds of cakes, fruits, sweets and dried fruits for each meal. When eating, Cixi sits alone, sometimes ordering female official Yu Deling to accompany her, while Yu Deling and others can only eat standing up. There are so many dishes, except for the nearby dishes, Cixi seldom moves. If Cixi fell in love with someone far away, she ordered the eunuch who served the meal to approach. Cixi eats no more than three or four dishes per meal, and the rest is taken away after eating. These dishes are either thrown away immediately, or eaten by female officials, maids, senior eunuchs, etc. Nine times out of ten, it is still intact, just like a sacrificial plate for ancestors to take away.
Yu Deling, a female official in the imperial palace of the Qing Dynasty, wrote in Two Years of the Qing Dynasty: "Cixi's diet knowledge is extremely profound, which may surprise many contemporary experts." Cixi loves stewed fat duck. That is, the ducks are washed, put into a porcelain jar with seasoning and steamed over slow fire for three days. The meat was crisp and soft, but Cixi only ate the most delicate and delicious duck skin with chopsticks. Cixi seems to have a soft spot for ducks. According to the report of China Cultural Relics, a menu for dinner on the 10th night of October in the 11th year of Xianfeng was newly discovered. Among more than 20 dishes, there are seven kinds of duck dishes, such as "bird's nest is like duck's eight treasures". Smoked dishes such as roast duck, roast suckling pig, smoked chicken and stewed leg of lamb also suit Cixi's taste. According to Cixi herself, when she was young, she loved to eat crispy roast pigskin. In her later years, "cherry meat" replaced "bell" and became her favorite dish.
If it is a holiday, the Imperial Dining Hall will also make various flower cakes such as chrysanthemum, jujube paste and eight-treasure porridge for Cixi, as well as various cakes. It is said that on this day, Cixi will go to the Paiyun Hall in Yihe Garden to eat a kind of "scone with barbecue" made of her favorite special charcoal and pine branches. Cixi snacks love steamed stuffed buns and stinky tofu. Wowotou, it is said that Eight-Nation Alliance called Beijing and Cixi fled to the west without eating. She saw a group of refugees gnawing at Wowotou, and one of them weighed four or five times, which was very delicious. After returning to the palace, I ordered the chef to make a nest, and I never tasted the delicious food again when I was hungry. The chef racked his brains and made one or two steamed buns with chestnut noodles and sugar. Although Cixi felt that the steamed bread she ate when she fled was not so fragrant and sweet, she finally made it, adding a little more flavor to the imperial meal. Stinky tofu must be Wang Zhihe's stinky tofu. Cixi can't live without every meal, so she must buy it from Wang Zhihe South Sauce Garden that day.
Cixi's birthday now has a menu: two hot pots: shredded pork fried spinach and game sauerkraut; Four kinds of big bowl dishes: red and white shredded pork duck with the word "Wan" in bird's nest, three fresh fat chickens with the word "Nian" in bird's nest, duck with the word "Ru" in bird's nest, and shredded pork chicken with the word "One" in bird's nest; Four dishes in the middle bowl: bird's nest duck strips, fresh shrimp balls, stewed duck fillet and sea cucumber; Six dishes: fried duck shreds with bird's nest, fried chicken and radish sauce, fried wings with shredded pork, duck with sauce, fried water bamboo with pickles and scrambled eggs with shredded pork. The name of the dish is not surprising. Apart from bird's nest, it is mainly ordinary chicken and duck meat, just like the home-cooked dishes that ordinary small restaurants can eat today.
Cixi likes drinking scented tea. She is fond of tea and is very particular about it. The water used for making tea is the spring water shipped from Yuquan Mountain that day; The scented tea you drink is not fire-baked jasmine and roses, but flowers. After mixing with dry tea, it is soaked in a small cup, which has both tea flavor and floral fragrance. Cixi drinks tea with a white jade teacup. Put three white jade cups on the golden plate, with tea in the middle and flowers on both sides. Two eunuchs stood in front of Cixi with saucers in their hands and shouted, "Lafayette has tasted tea!" Cixi just drank it.