The period TV series "Qing Ping Le" - to be honest, I watched it as a food drama. Candied fruits, lychees and white kidneys, gourds in vegetable soup, Kuyu, sesame seed cakes, fish paste and corn soup...the dazzling array of delicacies will make people salivate while watching TV series.

I couldn't sleep anyway, so I looked carefully for half the night, and saw two words for "mutton" - yes, the favorite delicacy of the Song Dynasty palace was mutton.

In the first episode of "Qing Ping Le", when Song Renzong Zhao Zhen returned to the palace, the palace prepared a dinner for him - roasted mutton. Grilled mutton is roasted mutton. It is charred on the outside and tender on the inside. It is fresh but not sour. It is a good dish to go with wine. However, all mutton must be eaten while hot, otherwise it will have a smell after cooling. Therefore, the imperial chef in the palace carefully heated the roasted mutton over a slow fire.

Song Renzong was a good emperor who was diligent in politics, loved the people, and lived frugally. He had few hobbies and was not picky about his food. One of his few hobbies was probably mutton.

A widely circulated story tells: Once, Song Renzong worked overtime until late at night, was tired and hungry, and suddenly wanted to eat a bowl of hot mutton soup. Under normal circumstances, Song Renzong wanted to eat mutton soup. With an order, the imperial chef who was on call 24 hours a day would quickly prepare it and serve it to him. However, Song Renzong was afraid of wasting food, so he resisted hunger and did not give orders to the imperial chef.

Of course, compared with Song Shenzong, Song Renzong was "weak".

Xu Song, a famous geographer of the Qing Dynasty, edited a "Song Hui Yao Collection", which mentioned that during the Song Shenzong period, the palace consumed 444,463 kilograms of mutton every year. On average, about 1,217 kilograms of mutton is eaten every day, which is almost a dozen sheep. Although most of the 440,000 kilograms of mutton were eaten by members of the royal family, if Song Shenzong was not interested in mutton, there would never have been such a huge consumption.

The question is, if everyone eats mutton every day, will the palace be filled with a strong smell of mutton? If the emperor convenes ministers for a meeting, will he ask everyone to smell the smell of sheep mutton as soon as he opens his mouth?

Of course not. During the Song Dynasty, although chili pepper, the "artifact" that suppresses the smell of mutton, had not yet entered China, the royal chefs of the palace were already able to skillfully use spicy seasonings such as dogwood, flower spicy, ginger, mustard, and fuliu to cook mutton. And there are many ways to cook mutton, including stewing, stewing, frying, stir-frying, steaming, boiling, broiling... there is always one that can minimize the smell and make the mutton more delicious.

Why did the imperial palace of the Song Dynasty like to use mutton?

The most common domestic animals in ancient times were cattle, sheep, and pigs. Cattle are one of the most important means of production in the farming era and are not allowed to be slaughtered easily. Pigs are considered lowly animals. Therefore, sheep would become the food of choice in the royal palace. "Xuzizhi Tongjian Changbian" records: "The food is not expensive and exotic, and the imperial kitchen only uses mutton. This is the ancestral family method, which leads to peace." Sheep are more common and not expensive. Eat mutton instead of beef, or delicacies from the mountains and seas. , to a large extent, it also saves money for the people.

Led by the imperial palace, people in the Song Dynasty also had a special liking for mutton. "Tokyo Menghualu" written by Meng Yuanlao and Li Hequn mentioned many street food popular in the capital Tokyo (today's Kaifeng). Foods involving mutton include stewed sheep, soft sheep, sheep tripe, sheep loin, and mutton. There are more than a dozen kinds of offal, raw mutton noodles, etc. This really proves the saying: the whole body of the sheep is a treasure...

However, the result of everyone flocking to eat mutton is that the mutton is The food is expensive. During the Shaoxing period of the Southern Song Dynasty, the price of mutton in Wuzhong area (Suzhou, Jiangsu) rose to 900 yuan per catty, which was almost equivalent to a day's salary of a county magistrate.

Poor people can no longer afford mutton, so they should settle for less and eat pork. However, the pigs in the Song Dynasty were not gelded, and everyone's cooking methods were inappropriate. They tasted very fishy and not many people liked to eat them. Later, gourmet Su Dongpo improved the method of cooking pork, making the pork fat but not greasy, soft but not rotten, delicious and fragrant - this is the famous dish "Dongpo Pork" that has been passed down to this day.