Of course, the emperor must pay attention to ostentation and extravagance when eating for the son of heaven. Every meal is dozens or even hundreds of dishes. Of course, it's not all that extravagant, it varies from person to person. But the fattest servant is the royal room in the palace, where there is a lot of knowledge:

Let's take a look at the list of ingredients in the imperial palace during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. The emperor's daily food: pork 126 kg, 5 geese, 33 chickens, 60 quails, pigeons 10, 20 kg of sesame oil and 22 kg of noodles. In addition, there are other kinds of ingredients: sugar, vinegar, oil, various seasonings and so on. But the emperor can't finish it all in one day, and the rest are eaten by eunuchs, maids and chefs around the emperor.

Converted down, the emperor's daily food standard is about 20 taels of silver, which is equivalent to several thousand yuan now, not more than 10 thousand yuan. Although money is nothing in the palace, it is a lot when it comes to pork, chickens, ducks, geese and fish, and all kinds of ingredients and seasonings. The most important thing is that corruption and kickbacks from the procurement staff of Yushanfang account for a large part.

By the time of Qing dynasty, the change was not too great. When Emperor Xuan Tong of the Qing Dynasty was in power, he recalled the consumption of the palace: he ate more than 10,000 kilograms of pork and nearly 3,000 chickens, ducks and geese a year.

In addition to the daily food on the list, the emperor will want to eat some special food when he is tired of eating it. The emperor's nonsense will bring unexpected trouble to the emperor's house.

For example, Qin Long, the father of Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty, had a hobby of eating donkey intestines. Although the emperor doesn't order donkey intestines every day, the imperial palace is ready to kill a donkey every day. If the emperor wants to eat something that he really can't eat, he has to find something that flies in the sky and swims in the sea that the emperor doesn't know about.

In view of the fact that the emperor's food standard can't be too low, the imperial palace often buys some birds in the sky and all kinds of seafood swimming in the sea, just to make the emperor and queen eat different flavors, so that the eunuch in charge of purchasing and the supervisor in charge of the imperial palace can enrich themselves with corruption.