Mutton has been loved by people since ancient times, and it has been deeply rooted in the bone marrow.

in the song dynasty, people attached great importance to ancestral methods. Although diet is a small way, it also includes: "ancient ancestral system: don't taste everywhere." "Family Law" has been raised to the height of governance: "The food is not expensive, and the taste of mutton is not used in the kitchen. This is the law of our ancestors, so it can bring peace. " The luxury of "the purple hump comes out of the green pot, and the water is refined over the plain scale" in the court of the Tang Dynasty has been difficult to recover under the constraints of the ancestors' models and family laws, so that when we review the historical materials of the court diet in the early Northern Song Dynasty, we often feel very sorry for the emperor at that time. According to Renzong in Song Dynasty, Renzong was hungry in the middle of the night. He wants to eat mutton and roast mutton, but he dare not order the chef to prepare it, lest it become a common practice and hurt people. He would rather starve until dawn. Emperors of past dynasties often used vegetables to show off, but Renzong did not. This is really an ancestral thrifty commandment.

in such a miserable life, the only comfort is mutton. Mutton has been a noble diet since the pre-Qin period. In the second part of the Mandarin "Chu Ci", Guan Shefu said: "The son of heaven eats three animals: cattle, sheep and pigs. Princes and princes eat cows, princes eat sheep, officials eat pigs, scholars eat fish, and ordinary people eat vegetables. The Book of Rites Wang Zhi also says: "Governors don't kill cows for no reason, officials don't kill sheep for no reason, literati don't kill dogs and rags for no reason, and ordinary people don't eat treasures for no reason." It can be seen that beef and mutton are big meat, which is difficult for ordinary people to deserve. In Tianshui, in order to raise cattle, it is forbidden to slaughter and eat meat, so mutton becomes the most important meat. Although the ancestral food restriction law prohibits odor, it is generous to the mutton law. "The food is not expensive, and the chef only eats mutton." Therefore, the court wants to talk mainly by mutton.

Song people's extreme preference for mutton can be said to be the characteristic of the times. Wang Anshi's explanation of the word "beauty" comes from the sheep, from the big one, that is to say, the big sheep is beautiful. Dongpo also has a saying, "The sheared Hu sheep is as big as a horse. Who remembers the fish feast with antlers?" Huang Tingjian also called it "soft rot is suitable for old age, wealth and integrity are hospitality". In Guan Xiu's "Zheng Ben Cao", mutton is juxtaposed with ginseng, "ginseng benefits qi, mutton nourishes shape", "benefits qi and calms the nerves, stimulates appetite and nourishes body, and tonifies yang and kidney". It is a good dietotherapy product. Therefore, from the height of the temple to the distance between the rivers and lakes, the wind of eating sheep is a very big ancestral method, which provides a reasonable passage for the royal mutton court and a reasonable food for mutton. As a result, the clear and long mutton air rose in the Song Dynasty Palace.

People in Song Dynasty loved mutton, which reached the level of national obsession.