Food in the Song Dynasty: changes between elegance and secularity. The popularity of palace food made mutton a symbol of nobility and delicacy in the Song Dynasty, and allowed the dish to be spread at public and private banquets among the people.

But when we look at it in detail, it was not the palace that really influenced the diet of the Song Dynasty, but the people.

There is such a dynasty in Chinese history that has inherited the beauty of food for thousands of years and started the eight major Chinese cuisines. However, it can not only leave the humor of market food advertisements in the rigid etiquette, but also have the legend of Luoyang Zhigui in a cookbook. These are the two

The food culture of Song Dynasty.

It is like the tea-fighting game popular in the Song Dynasty. Sometimes it is dignified in temples, and sometimes it is passed on to the hands of traffickers and lackeys. It is endlessly memorable as it changes between elegance and vulgarity.

The Royal Palace that Does Not Eat Pork Throughout the dynasties, the diet of the palace has been the standard of the times.

The court of the Song Dynasty changed from the exaggerated and fabricated style of the Tang Dynasty's palace cuisine in which "the purple camel's peak emerges from the emerald cauldron, and the water essence is plated with plain scales."

The raw materials and methods to date.

From those records full of life-like atmosphere, there is an interesting custom circulated. In the imperial palaces of the Song Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, "the royal kitchens only use mutton" and in principle "no pig meat".

According to records, the first dish Taizu of the Song Dynasty entertained Qian Chu, the monarch of the Wuyue Kingdom, was "Spin Bream", which was made from mutton; and Renzong prohibited the court from serving "roast mutton" as a tribute to people who were hungry in the middle of the night, so mutton was the royal ingredient in the Song Dynasty.

The Supreme Being.

At that time, the mutton produced in Fengyi County, Shaanxi Province was said to be "the most tender".

During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of the Song Dynasty, "the imperial chef spent tens of thousands of sheep every year", which was bought in Shaanxi.

As the dynasty continued, the custom of eating mutton as the main meat in the Song Dynasty palace continued unabated.

Roughly during the reigns of Renzong and Yingzong of the Song Dynasty, the imperial court bought tens of thousands of Khitan sheep from "Hebei Guanchang."

In the Shenzong era, the imperial kitchen account book recorded in a shocking way "434,463 pounds and four ounces of mutton, 19 mouthfuls of lambs, and 4,130 pounds of pork in a year."

"Eleventh", although a small amount of pork expenditure is recorded here, most of the pork is on the "dishes" and side dishes.

This eating habit in the palaces of the Northern Song Dynasty was passed down even to the Southern Song Dynasty when Hangzhou was the capital. Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty proudly stated that it was an ancestral custom to use mutton instead of pork in the palace.

Even during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty, the queen "provided one sheep a day for meals in the palace."

Even though it is located in the south, there are not many sheep, and the remaining food is replaced by fish, shrimp and aquatic products that are special to the south, not pork.

Appreciating the dishes before feasting on delicacies In the imperial banquet records of the Song Dynasty, it is not difficult to find dish names such as "Embroidered Gaoyu Eight Fruit Barrier", "Lexian Dried Fruit Fork Bag" and "Golden Spicy Medicine".

These imaginative dishes are not for tasting, they are just "viewing dishes" at the banquet. For example, the "Embroidered Gaoyu Eight Fruit Barrier" is made of various precious utensils piled with fragrant balls and real oranges.

, pomegranate, orange, goose pear, milk pear, flowering papaya.

The "golden fragrance" includes ten boxes of spices including brain flower, licorice flower, cinnabar ball, woody clove, waterborneol, Shi Junzi, shrunk flower, osmanthus flower, atractylodes ginseng, and olive flower.

These famous dishes of stacked fruits and spices are just for viewing with their beautiful color and exquisite display to stimulate appetite or freshen the air before a meal.

In the Song Dynasty, they were called "Kancai", "Kanguozi" and "Kanshi".

The specific origin of Kancai cannot be verified, but the imperial banquet "Shaowei Banquet" had already appeared in the Tang Dynasty, and the prosperous and prosperous Song Dynasty carried forward this custom and officially became a customization in banquets and daily meals.

In the imperial banquet of the Tang Dynasty, the dish of "Vegetarian Steamed Sound Part" was a group of Penglai fairy-like singing girls and dancers made of vegetarian vegetables and steamed noodles. There were 70 pieces in total, which was huge and spectacular.

However, Song's cooking skills are even more meticulous.

The specific practice of watching the dishes at the imperial banquet is unknown, but from watching the fruits among the people and the palaces of princes and princes, we can get a glimpse of its exquisiteness.

For example, Bianliang Tokyo residents like the carved honey fried dish.

Among them, the carvings are the food patterns carved from melons in the Tokyo food market, namely "medicinal melons".

Not only Tokyo, but also the food markets in various cities have launched their own masterpieces, such as Urashima's winter melon - a three-foot-long winter melon placed on a longevity shelf, with rockeries, turtles, cranes, longevity stars and fairies carved on it, which is extremely exquisite.

Of course, the chefs at the prince's palace are the ones with the highest level. They use bayberry, winter melon, kumquat, fresh ginger, young bamboo shoots, etc. to carve sweet and sour plum balls, sweet honey winter melon fish, slightly spicy and sweet fish.

They also carve flowers, large segments and square flowers on kumquats, oranges and papayas, and lotus leaves on green plums.

It is worth mentioning that the food in these royal banquets is not only fruits and spices, but also fruits and spices.

It was recorded in "Tokyo Menghualu" that during the imperial banquet, envoys and ministers from various countries "distributed ring cakes, oil cakes, and jujube towers as plates, and fruits were listed next." In front of the envoys of the Liao Dynasty, "lone sheep" was added.

Chickens and geese with bones and cooked meat are served on a plate, all tied with small ropes, and there are also raw onions, leeks, garlic and vinegar each.

Garlic leeks.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, due to the sweet taste, there were gradually more honey-carved fruits and carved candied fruits on the plate.

The popularity of this kind of cooking has been passed down to this day and is the ancestor of craft cuisine.

Advertisements in the Market Although the food fashion of the Song Dynasty was based on the likes and dislikes of the palace, as in previous dynasties, it was never the palace that led the fashion trend, but the folk food culture.