The 11th issue of "Dream of Red Mansions" by Zhujiujun: Food overview in "Dream of Red Mansions" describes all aspects of the life of aristocrats in the Qing Dynasty. It is an encyclopedia that reflects the life of aristocrats in the Qing Dynasty. The Jia family in "A Dream of Red Mansions" has been prosperous for hundreds of years. From the time when "Rong Guo Gong" and "Ning Guo Gong" were feudal lords to Jia Rong and Jia Lan, not only the accumulation of wealth has reached a certain height, but also the material possessions The enjoyment is even more exquisite. The aristocratic life of bells and whistles is highlighted in the high pursuit of food. So, let’s take a brief look at how mouth-watering the food in “Dream of Red Mansions” is. There are many types of food in "Dream of Red Mansions". Some scholars have made statistics on "Dream of Red Mansions" and found that there are more than 200 kinds of food. Judging from the chapters of "Dream of Red Mansions" alone, there are as many as thirteen chapters related to food. "Dream of Red Mansions" is a work that describes various aspects of social life. It writes about all aspects of family life. Common porridge, rice and dishes are indispensable for daily life scenes. Many delicacies written by Cao Xueqin, such as "ham stewed elbow", "bird's nest porridge", "Lu'an tea", "Huiquan wine", "longan soup", "yam cake stuffed with jujube paste", as well as the unusual dish "eggplant" "Fuck" and so on, it makes people swallow their saliva. Let’s introduce these delicacies below. Complex dish - eggplant. In "Dream of Red Mansions", this dish should be the most impressive. In the 41st chapter of "Dream of Red Mansions", it is written: "Jia Mu smiled and said: 'You can chop some eggplant and feed it to him.' Sister Feng heard that she chopped some eggplant and fed it to Grandma Liu, because she laughed and said "You eat eggplant every day, why don't you try how delicious our eggplant is?" This was the first time Grandma Liu had eaten eggplant. The word "鲞" comes from the dialect of Zhejiang Province. It originally referred to a kind of sea fish or dried fish, and later generally referred to pickled food. The eggplant in "A Dream of Red Mansions" refers to dishes made from eggplant that are as delicious as eggplant. The production method is also very complicated. In the book, Wang Xifeng introduced to Grandma Liu: "It's not difficult. You peel off the eggplants you just harvested. You only need to clean the flesh, cut it into pieces, and fry it with chicken. Then use it Cut chicken breasts, mushrooms, new bamboo shoots, mushrooms, dried five-spice tofu, and various dried fruits into pegs. Feed them with chicken soup until they are dry, collect them with sesame oil, and mix them with some bad oil. Put them in a magnetic jar and seal it tightly. When it's time to eat, take it out and mix it with fried chicken and melon. " From this description, we can know that the eggplant is a very exquisite dish with complicated production process and rich ingredients. This dish is not a delicacy imagined by Cao Xueqin. It had appeared and been recorded before the Qing Dynasty. According to Volume 16 of "Meng Liang Lu" written by Wu Zimu in the Song Dynasty: "There are no less than two hundred fish shops inside and outside the city." In Lin'an of the Southern Song Dynasty, which is today's Hangzhou, fish and pickled fish were sold. Food store. Lin'an is located in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Fishermen in Jiangsu and Zhejiang had the habit of pickling food in ancient times. Moreover, Qin Yimin's "Dream of Red Mansions Diet" records that there is a dish called "Gua Yu" in eastern Zhejiang and Ningbo. Melon and Gua Yu are similar block vegetables. Eggplant may have evolved from Gua Yu. The practice of "quail eggplant" was recorded in Gao Lian's "Eight Notes of Zunsheng" in the Ming Dynasty. "Pick the tender eggplants and cut them into thin strands, blanch them in boiling soup, dry them, grind them into powder with salt, soy sauce, pepper, raspberry, fennel, licorice, tangerine peel, almonds and red beans, mix them well, dry them in the sun and steam them, collect them and set aside Soak it in boiling soup until soft, then dip it in fragrant oil and fry it. "This may be the early "eggplant". Although it is not as rich in ingredients as recorded in "A Dream of Red Mansions", it was still a very exquisite dish for people at that time. Staple Food - Oden Rouge Rice After learning about an exquisite dish, let's take a look at the staple food of Jia's family. In the fifty-third chapter of the book, it is written that the grains paid by Wuzhuangtou in Heishan Village to Ningguo Mansion were: two loads of Yutian Rouge rice, fifty husks of Binuo, and fifty husks of Bainuo... Yutian Rouge rice was only 200 kilograms. , it can be seen that it is very precious. This is a kind of high-quality rice. When cooked, it is as red as rouge and has a fragrant aroma. The rice grains are longer. According to Liu Tinggong's "Zaiyuan Magazine" and "Shuntianfu Zhi" of the Qing Dynasty, rouge rice was an improved variety of Yutian rice planted by Emperor Kangxi in the imperial field of Fengze Garden. Therefore, it was also called Yutian rice and was used for internal meals. This improved variety was later distributed and planted in Yutian in the suburbs of Beijing, so it was called Yutian rouge rice. In addition to this very small amount of rouge rice, the rice consumed by the Jia family is also a very high-quality variety. In the eighth chapter, it is written that Baoyu ate half a bowl of Bijing porridge. Bijing is also a high-quality rice. It is mainly produced in Hebei Province and has also been introduced in Shandong and other places. According to "Miscellaneous Songs of Food", its characteristics are "slender grains, slightly green, and fragrant when cooked." In the old days, it was reserved for emperors and concubines. In the sixty-second chapter, it was written that on Baoyu's birthday, Fangguan was not seen. When he returned to Yihongyuan, Fangguan had already gone to the kitchen to order lunch. The staple food was a bowl of green rice and japonica rice. Among them, the green border fragrant rice and Japonica rice are steamed with Bijing fragrant rice. It can be seen that the status of the Jia family is high. Exquisite snacks - Osmanthus fragrans dew In the thirty-fourth chapter of the book, Baoyu was beaten, and Mrs. Wang asked the maid Xiren to bring Baoyu two bottles of "fragrant dew". "When Xi Ren looked at it, he saw only two small glass bottles with a size of three inches. They had silver screw caps on them. The goose-yellow paper said "Osmanthus Clear Dew" and the other one said "Rose Clear Dew". These two small bottles of treasure are very curious. Osmanthus osmanthus is actually two kinds of fragrant dew refined from osmanthus and rose. Osmanthus osmanthus is also called osmanthus, rock osmanthus, gulixiang, etc. The flower of osmanthus osmanthus is osmanthus dew, which is the fragrance obtained by distillation of osmanthus. The function of soothing the liver, regulating qi, awakening the spleen and appetizing, can also be regarded as medicine.

It is recorded in "Compendium of Materia Medica": "The clusters among the rock ridges are called rock osmanthus, and the common name is osmanthus." Such exquisite snacks may only be enjoyed by royal nobles. Cao Xueqin had a prosperous family life in his early years, and his enjoyment of fine clothing and food must have been reflected in his articles. His descriptions of food are exquisite, such as the eggplant that amazed Grandma Liu. These descriptions of food enrich the cultural connotation of "A Dream of Red Mansions", express a deeper social history, and also allow us to understand the social landscape of the Qing Dynasty. This article is the 11th issue of the series ""Bijiu Jun Reads Red Mansions"", first published in Toutiao. Toutiao is an exclusive article and may not be reproduced.