"Dream of Red Mansions" is an encyclopedia of ancient feudal society. Whether you want to know about poetry, Buddhist etiquette, worldliness, architectural scenery, or the food culture of the aristocratic life at that time, it has everything you need. . As the saying goes, "Food is the most important thing for the people." How could the food in "A Dream of Red Mansions" not be rich? Taking the life of the Jia family as an example, we can see the three major characteristics of the food culture of the Jia family. One is that the items are abundant and the food is clearly classified. The second is that the Jia family has five rules when eating. These rules are detailed. The taste has far-reaching meaning; thirdly, when Cao Gong described such delicious food, what exactly was he conveying. If you want to start the food culture in the life of ancient nobles, start with the food in "Dream of Red Mansions". First, the food in Jia's family is very rich, and all kinds of food are available

Eating plays a very important role in people's lives, so Jia's family will also pay special attention to food. A major feature of Jia's cuisine is its richness, and each meal is strictly classified. The emphasis on food is also concerned with the quality of life.

Although people in the Jia family do not care about eating big fish and meat, these dishes are indispensable on the table. So what are the meat dishes that appear in people’s sight every day? According to Sister-in-law Liu, the steward of the small kitchen in Daguanyuan, the ladies and girls in Daguanyuan only need two chickens, two ducks, more than ten kilograms of meat, and a handful of vegetables a day, which is a huge demand for the entire Jia family. .

Among the more distinctive meat dishes in Jia's house, the one with the most delicacies is in Wang Xifeng's yard, whether it is the ham stewed elbow prepared for Jia Lian's wet nurse or the hot ham that he took to eat with Grandma Li. pheasants, as well as pheasants prepared for Jia Mu, and fried quails made to please Mrs. Xing. Anyway, there is no shortage of meat delicacies in Wang Xifeng's house. Other delicious meat dishes include the "roast venison" in the Grand View Garden, a bowl of steamed duck with fermented rice made by sister-in-law Liu, the steward of the Grand View Garden, for Fangguan, and the fresh bamboo shoots and pickled civet cats specially given by Baoyu and Daiyu from Jia's mother. There is so much more to the food than that, but that’s all in a nutshell. Meat dishes and Jia Zhen's chaos, killing pigs and sheep every day, butchering geese and ducks, and Xia Jingui's eccentricity, not liking meat but only drinking with fried bones.

The vegetarian dishes of Jia's family are fresh vegetables every day, among which bamboo shoots are very special. Jia's family has made fried fresh bamboo shoots, and there are also chicken marrow bamboo shoots made by people below to honor Jia's mother. Baoyu has just recovered from a serious illness. The ham and fresh bamboo shoot soup made for him, and Aunt Xue’s special sour bamboo shoot and chicken skin soup are both good appetizers and hangover relievers. Lotus roots are often mentioned, especially when it is Xue Pan's birthday. The lotus roots are very large and cannot be found normally. In order to tease Grandma Liu, Wang Xifeng once let her eat pigeon eggs. Pigeon eggs are not easy to come by. In order to rush to play, Baoyu ate "chazuke rice" with pheasants.

There are also a lot of braised foods in Jia's house. Aunt Xue's house and Ning's house will specially make some bad goose feet and duck noodles. Jia's house will make bad quail. Jia's mother went to Luxue'an to watch everyone eat barbecue. I just ate some. Rouge goose breast was a delicacy that Baoyu Zhanfangguan only ate. The Jia family also marinated duck heads. Xiangyun once ate them when he was writing poetry. Fried radish with soy sauce and pepper oil sauce. It is also a pickle that goes well with rice.

The porridge of Jia's family is also very rich, among which the most common one is bird's nest porridge. The wealth of Jia's family lies in the fact that bird's nest is just an ordinary diet. Among them, Qin Keqing drank it when he was sick, and Baochai drank it for Daiyu. For the sake of her health, she gave some to Daiyu, and Wang Xifeng was also drinking bird's nest porridge for her recovery from miscarriage. Secondly, Jia's late-night snacks also include porridge, such as duck meat porridge, japonica rice porridge cooked with dates, and almond tea. Jia's daily rice dishes include rare red rice porridge and Bijing porridge. As the saying goes, "He who eats cereals is born", so rice occupies a very staple food position in Jia's family. In addition, Jia's family has a secret method of maintaining health. If you get a minor illness, you will simply be hungry and eat light porridge and vegetables, so there will be a lot of porridge.

Because the Jia family also has a two-meal system, meals are very important. However, it is not forbidden to eat other than strict meals, so snacks and desserts will be written as a supplement to the daily diet. Qingwen likes tofu skin buns, Yuanchun gives Baoyu steamed cheese with sugar, Xue Baochai gives Daiyu clean powder, plum slices and snowflake candies, and Qin Keqing can eat jujube paste and yam cake when she is sick.

Jia’s house has special creamy pine pulp rolls, lotus root powder and cinnamon sugar cakes, pine and goose oil rolls, one-inch dumplings, and crab meat dumplings, but the food is too greasy. Neither of them likes to eat. There are many fruits during the Lantern Festival, including albizia soup, auspicious fruits, wishful cakes, Lantern Festivals with various fruits, etc. Baoyu's aunt Mrs. Wang also sent them some water chestnut cakes and chicken fat rolls. After Baoyu was beaten, his body's qi and blood were stagnated, so he liked to drink sour plum soup. Mrs. Wang specially gave him osmanthus and rose dew, both of which are very good to drink.

There are also many dried fruits in Jia's house, including red dates, two chestnuts, three groundnuts, four water chestnuts, and five-spice taro for making Laba porridge. Baoyu once fed Jinchuan'er Xiangxue Runjin Dan. Jin Chuaner was driven away by Mrs. Wang because of her inappropriate words; Baoyu once gave Xiangyun two fresh fruits, red water chestnuts and chicken heads, and the other one was a plate of steamed new chestnut flour cake with osmanthus sugar. Li Wan's sister-in-law brought her a lot of tea, and she asked her servants to mix it for Youshi to drink.

Fruits in Jia's Mansion are also abundant in all seasons. They eat peaches in autumn. Jia's mother followed Baoyu in the evening and waited for her children to eat. As a result, she couldn't go to the party in Ning's Mansion the next day; Baoyu, Feng Ziying and other young masters went there. During the meal, he also thought of a poem about pears, "The rain beats the pear blossoms and the door is closed." The pear blossoms behind Daiyu's house, Jia's family has a pear garden, and there will be no shortage of pears in it; Jia's family loves to eat watermelons in summer and autumn; Baoyu gives Tanchun sent fresh lychees, which are not easy to eat in the north; when Grandma Liu came to play in the Grand View Garden, Qiaojie exchanged grapefruits for Baner's chayote, which also hinted at the marriage between the two; Baoyu saw apricots Manshu, thinking that Xing Xiuyan would have a family full of children and grandchildren in the future, he suddenly felt sad that his daughters would all grow up and get married. There were also plums in the fruit trees planted by the Jia family, but because the Grand View Garden later became a contract management system, ordinary people could not eat them.