If "meat" is mentioned on the dining table of China people, then most people's subconscious reaction is pork, which is caused by the eating habits of modern China people. But in fact, in ancient China people's eating habits, mutton was the protagonist on the table for a long time, and the struggle between pork and mutton lasted for thousands of years.
China people have a long history of domesticating domestic animals. In the pre-Qin period, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs and chickens were raised, which were called "six animals". Among the six animals, cattle, sheep and pigs are "too anxious", that is, meat for sacrifice. There is an introduction about the eating habits of the Han Dynasty in "Chu Guan Hua Xia": "The emperor eats too fast, and there are cattle and sheep. Princes eat cows, doctors eat pigs, scholars eat fried fish, and Shu Ren eats vegetables. " It is said that emperors eat all cattle, sheep and pigs, princes eat beef, Qing can eat mutton, and doctors eat pork next. Fish is not so valuable in meat. Of course, it's good to have meat. Ordinary people can only eat vegetables every day.
There are obviously six kinds of animals, how can sheep and pigs enter the finals? Let's see why they got promoted.
The origin of horses in the six livestock is not in the Central Plains, and they are basically used for riding, which is higher than the edible value and naturally reluctant to eat.
Cattle are generally used for sacrifice, and people with high status will eat them. However, since the invention of the iron plow at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, cattle have become an important labor tool, so all dynasties have banned the slaughter of cattle. Tang Wuzong said, "Cattle and their crops are forbidden to be slaughtered." People and cattle are basically partnerships, and they can only be used for other purposes after natural death. As for the Liangshan hero in Water Margin, it is a special case. They are a kind of food punk with the mentality of challenging the ruling rules.
The meat production of chickens and dogs can not be compared with that of large livestock, and naturally it is not the main meat source. The rest of the sheep and pigs belonging to Tai Prison have fans.
Confucius once said, "I have never been ignorant when I tie myself up", which means that I take ten pieces of bacon and accept him as an apprentice. At the Hongmen banquet, Xiang Yu once gave Fan Kuai a rotator cuff. Fan Kuai put it on the shield and ate it when cutting it.
Mutton also has a story. In the second year of Lu, Zheng beat the Song State, driving a carriage and herding sheep for Hua Yuan, the general of the Song State. Because he was not given mutton the night before, others ate it. The next day, in a rage, he drove the carriage and gave the Huayuan to the enemy. Turned into a tragedy caused by a bowl of mutton.
At this time, the consumption of pigs and sheep is almost equally divided. There is a saying that "there are thousands of pigs (250) in Zezhong, and many people have" thousands of sheep (250) ".
From the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the proportion of pigs and sheep began to tilt, and mutton began to prevail, and it has been maintained for thousands of years. This may be influenced by the customs of the northern minority regime. At this time, the scale of pig breeding began to shrink. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Galand in Luoyang once said that "sheep are the best on land".
The leading momentum of mutton has been maintained until the Tang Dynasty. There are 105 descriptions of meat, 47 descriptions of mutton and only 12 descriptions of pork in Taiping Guangji. There is "sheep wine" in literati's works, but there is no such thing as "pig wine".
In the Tang Dynasty, there was a special banquet called "Roast Tail Banquet", which was held to celebrate the promotion of officials. It is said that its name is also related to sheep. Because the new sheep will be bullied when they are integrated into the flock, only by burning the tail of the new sheep can they be successfully integrated. Therefore, if you enter a higher level of officialdom, you should also "burn your tail" and pray for a smooth career.
Once Wei Juyuan was promoted to minister and gave a banquet to entertain guests. On his barbecue, except for the delicacies of several bears and deer, the hard dishes are basically mutton.
For example, a kind of "Hua Ruan Beef Sausage" is made by mixing sheep bone marrow with beef and cooking it with sheep oil. "Sheepskin silk" refers to the finely cut sheep belly silk; "Wandering sauce" is a sauce made of fish and mutton, which is fresh; "Five lettuce" is a big plate of five kinds of meat: sheep, pigs, cows, bears and deer. "Kochi's" is made of mutton, sausage and bean powder. The most exaggerated is "Shengping Roast". A dish is made of 300 sheep's tongues and deer's tongues, which are mixed together, implying eloquence and embodying the unity of monarch and minister. There is no pork on the table for such a feast.
In the Song Dynasty, mutton became more and more advanced. There is a joke in the history of the Song Dynasty that Song Renzong "was hungry at night in the palace, thinking about eating and burning sheep". It is said that Song Renzong is hungry and wants to eat mutton at midnight. It is not clear whether Song Renzong likes mutton very much. It's just that the chef stopped using mutton in the palace, and there is no other meat. At this time, the court chef spent 430,000 Jin of mutton a year, while the pork was only 4,000 Jin.
The palace loves to use mutton, which naturally has a downward effect. From official to folk, mutton has also become the first-class meat on the table. People, whether they are married or admitted to a scholar, even if they burn incense and make a wish, if there is no sheep in the case, it is impossible to get it.
When Su Dongpo, a famous gourmet, was an official in Beijing, he was tired of mutton and said that "Beijing was fat for ten years", but he was still obsessed with it after being demoted to Huizhou. In a letter to his younger brother Su Zhe, he wrote that Huizhou market is sparse and commodities are scarce, but he kills a sheep every day.
Su Shi, a condemned criminal, was naturally not qualified to compete with local dignitaries for good mutton, so he privately told the goat slayer to leave him some unwanted sheep spines. When Su Shi took them home, he cooked the sheep spines first, then poured wine and salt on them, roasted them with fire, and picked minced meat between the bones. He claimed that it was like eating seafood, shrimps and crabs. Unconsciously, it also created a classic way to eat sheep and scorpions. Su Shi said that the only drawback was that the meat was stripped from the bones, and the dogs around him looked unhappy.
Han Zongru is a good friend of Su Shi. I don't know if he was influenced by Su Shi. He also likes mutton, but his family is poor and can't afford it. At that time, Su Shi's handwriting was already very famous in the Northern Song Dynasty, so Han Zongru gave the letter written by Su Shi to Lin Yao, the temple, and changed a dozen catties of mutton at a time. After Han Zongru discovered this way of raw meat, he began to write letters frequently. Someone told Su Shi the mystery, and Su Shi was not annoyed. Han Zongru sent a servant to urge him to reply. He replied with a smile. When he went back, he said that the butcher had a rest today and had no meat to eat. The so-called "Su Wen is ripe and eats mutton; Su Wensheng, eating vegetable soup "has also become a social fashion.
However, it was Su Dongpo who left behind the "Dongpo elbow" and the famous "ode to pork" when he was demoted to Huangzhou: the good pork in Huangzhou was as cheap as dirt. If you refuse to eat, the poor can't cook. Get up in the morning and play two bowls, which are full and can't be taken care of. Although pork has reached the verge of being despised by the rich and not eaten by those who have no money, compared with mutton with high price and small quantity (influenced by territorial issues, mutton in the Song Dynasty has mainly relied on imports at this time), most people have meat to eat. "Tokyo Dream" records that dozens of people in Kaifeng drive tens of thousands of pigs to Beijing every night.
Therefore, although in the Yuan Dynasty, when Mongols entered the Central Plains, mutton was still dominant. At that time, the oral teaching material "Old Seven" wrote that "cooking Chinese rice" was mainly sheep and chicken, but the status of pork has quietly begun to reverse.
After the Ming Dynasty, this pattern changed completely. According to the History of the Forbidden City in Ming Dynasty, there are a series of hard pork dishes such as roast pork and pork buns on the royal New Year table. The number of court animals left by Guanglu Temple in the late Ming Dynasty was 18900 pigs and 10750 sheep, which shows that pork has come from behind.
The change on the dining table is actually a reflection of social economy. Even if Zhu Chengzu, the emperor of Ming Dynasty, strictly forbids the killing of pigs, and offenders are severely punished, it will not hinder the shrinking of animal husbandry caused by unprecedented population reproduction. Pigs eat omnivorous food, the land area for breeding is small, and pig manure can also be used as fertilizer, which is much more cost-effective than sheep. Under the condition that the same area of land can produce food to feed ten times the population, people prefer to grow grain to raise pigs rather than herd sheep. The ban issued by Zhu Yuanzhang only lasted for three months and then expired.
Therefore, although the Qing emperor came from outside the customs, it did not change the momentum of "strong pigs and weak sheep", but it was more obvious. Every Spring Festival, the consumption of pork in the capital can reach 654.38+ 10,000 Jin. The status of pork is also soaring. At the dinner table of Ganlong New Year's Eve banquet, there were 65 Jin of pork, 25 Jin of wild pork and only 20 Jin of mutton.
Today, as far as eating habits are concerned, pork has become the mainstream of most China people's dining tables, while mutton is mainly favored in some northern regions. However, in some southern areas, the dietary customs inherited from ancient traditions still cultivate the taste buds of local people.
Jianyang in Sichuan is one of them. Raising sheep and eating mutton has a long history. It can be traced back to the Han Dynasty, when Jianyang was also called Niu Kun. "Every household has chickens, and the smell of sheep is ten miles away" is a portrayal of this place. According to the Records of Jianzhou County, there was a man named Dong He in Niuhuang County, who was related to the origin of eating mutton here.
Legend has it that one day, a farmer in Niuhuang County took four sheep across the river by boat. Due to the large number of people in the boat, an adult ram accidentally fell into the water. Sheep can't swim either, and soon they sink to the bottom of the river. Unexpectedly, the fish in the river were attracted by the sinking sheep and rushed to eat. This scene happened to be seen by a fisherman, who cast a net to catch fish. When he got home and cut open the fish belly, the fisherman found that the fish belly was full of mutton, so he had a whim, washed the fish and cooked it with the broken mutton in his stomach. Unexpectedly, the boiled soup is tender and white, and the smell of mutton and fish is the same. After the news spread, Dong He, the county magistrate, also tried to cook this dish, which was named "Dong He Fish and Sheep Pot".
This is the origin of Jianyang mutton soup, but as for the truth, there is no way to verify it. It is also said that mutton soup was originally a prescription given by local people to Jian Yong, a famous soldier of the Three Kingdoms. At that time, Jian Yong broke down from overwork and could not recover for a long time. An old man provided a recipe for stewed radish with mutton, and Jian Yong had a miraculous effect after eating it. Later, people added pig bones, crucian carp and other materials to the soup, and the stew time was also extended. A pot of water was boiled for about ten hours, and the soup was less than one third, and it became white and fragrant.
Ancient cooking is necessary, but there are some historical reasons why Jianyang mutton soup is deified.
As we all know, Jianyang mutton soup is made of local big-eared sheep. Its meat is tender and chewy, and its smell is low. Big-eared sheep are the offspring of a hybrid group. In genealogy, there are some "fire-knotted goats" from Jianyang and some "nubi sheep" from Georgia, USA. It was during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period that West China University of Medical Sciences, entrusted by Song Meiling, donated 10 Nubian goats from the United States to improve the local sheep in Longquan mountain area of Jianyang, and the big-eared sheep was born.
Of course, the food in Jianyang is not only mutton soup, but also mutton soup is just one of the nine special restaurants in Jianyang. The rest, such as Haidilao (unexpectedly, Haidilao was opened in Jianyang), Jianyang pea soup, Wu's jujube rabbit, bean jelly, Yunlong water crisp, Jiajiamao duck, goose and hand-torn Panlong eel, are all delicious foods that gluttons can't miss.
Sichuan's Millennium food culture can't miss Jianyang.
Such a price is naturally unbearable for small officials and ordinary people, so pigs are the main source of meat for the people. According to "Tokyo Dream", tens of thousands of pigs are bought from the countryside and sent to Tokyo every day, and then slaughtered by countless "butchers Zheng", and the meat is sent to the table of ordinary people's homes.