how big was the taste of Ming emperors?
since ancient times, food is the most important thing for people, and royal law is no exception. There are exquisite and varied foods in the court. Needless to say, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were well dressed, so what did they eat?
1. What does the emperor usually eat?
According to the annals of Guanglu Temple in Nanjing, Zhu Yuanzhang's diet on a certain day in June, 17th year: breakfast: fried mutton, fried shredded goose, fried shredded yellow vegetables, steamed pig's trotters with boiled pigs, fried fresh fish, cooked meat in the oven, cooked rice noodles and cooked chicken. There are 12 channels in total.
lunch: shrimp with pepper vinegar, roasted goose, roasted sheep's head and hoof, goose meat, salted mustard lamb tripe board, garlic vinegar white blood soup, steamed chicken with five flavors, goat bone with yuan sauce, steamed kidney flower with balsamic vinegar, steamed fresh fish with five flavors, steamed gluten with five flavors, crystal horn of mutton, shredded goose noodle soup, three fresh soups, Daoxiao Noodles, chopped mutton with pepper, fragrant rice and so on. There are 24 channels in total.
as for the content of the dinner, there is no record in the history books.
with so many dishes, the emperor is too extravagant. Can you finish them? The fact is that in the early Ming Dynasty, everything was in ruins. From the emperor to the people, frugality and simplicity dominate, which is nothing compared with the food in the late Ming Dynasty. However, since it was eaten by the emperor, the catering director certainly made a few more moves, and one more dish gave him another choice. For example, Emperor Chongzhen's diet was too rich, but he only had porridge: steamed fragrant rice, steamed glutinous rice, steamed millet, rice porridge, coix seed porridge, Xiliang rice porridge, Gu Liang rice porridge, millet bean porridge, pine nut chestnut jujube porridge and so on. There are other noodles, meat, vegetables and seafood on the table. Bring whatever you like. Court food is so rich, is there anything else? Of course. Let's start with staple food, dishes, seafood, soup and drinks.
Rice Noodles
During the Wanli period, Huang Yi recorded that there were many kinds of court pasta, similar to steamed bread, flower rolls, cakes, flower cakes, noodles and so on. Just like the pastry market. There are exquisite shapes, such as flower rolls with steamed rolls, Christina rolls and butterfly rolls, as well as many kinds of cakes, steamed cakes, bean cakes, sand cakes, sugar cakes, sesame cakes and pretzels. Flowers can be used as snacks and desserts, such as chrysanthemum cake, sunflower cake, hibiscus cake, pomegranate cake, lotus seed cake and so on, and can be pounded into stuffing to make cakes. Noodles include noodles, egg noodles, white noodles and so on. In short, pasta is rich enough.
did the emperors of the Ming dynasty also like to eat patterned rice? There are not many records in the history books, but a kind of cool breeze rice is put forward separately. Just listening to the name makes you feel very artistic, right? This is a kind of rice that can cool off the summer heat in the scorching sun: crystal rice, longan powder, borneol powder, beef and milk are mixed, put into a golden pot, then put into an ice pool for thorough cooling, and then made into cold rice through conduction. We all know that pasta is the main food in the north and rice is the main food in the south. Zhu Di, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, began to live in Beijing, and his staple food gradually tended to be pasta.
vegetables
There are many kinds of meat for meals, such as common poultry and exotic animals. Goose, for example, was very precious and delicious in the Ming Dynasty, but it was generally not very delicious. According to the records of imperial meat in the country, there are many ways to eat it: burning, steaming and salt, and there are nearly ten ways to eat it. There is also a dish called Kung Pao Long Boiled Chicken, which is actually made of horse meat and chicken. Horse meat represents dragons and chicken represents chickens. According to the records of Emperor Liu Ruoyu, the eunuch in the palace, the dishes in the first month are: spicy live rabbit, yellow squirrel beyond the Great Wall, live shrimp under the ice, cold-cut sheep tail, fried sheep belly, pig enema, sausage, oil kidney and so on. Emperor Chongzhen also had the habit of eating donkey meat.
Strange, why don't you mention beef? Cattle had a high status in ancient China, and the ritual of offering sacrifices to Tai Prison was to use cattle, pigs and sheep as juvenile prisons, which was lower than that of cattle. Cattle, as the most important farming tool, should not be slaughtered casually, otherwise it will be viola
As for vegetables, Song Qifeng recorded that when Emperor Chongzhen had a meal, some coarse-grained vegetables, such as bitter vegetable roots, bitter vegetable leaves, dandelion, reed roots, asparagus, garlic moss and so on. It is arranged in the restaurant according to the usual practice. Therefore, folk seasonal dishes and snacks have also been collected. But how to eat it is not clear. Is it dipped in sauce, steamed or fried? There are not many historical records. However, just like now, the emperor's royal meals also choose some seasonal vegetables according to the seasons, and there are fresh foods every month, which change every day. Rich in materials and diverse in patterns.
seafood and aquatic products
Most of the food in the palace was paid from other places, which caused a problem. With the traffic conditions at that time, the seafood and aquatic products shipped from the south were not fresh. For example, Wanli Wild was compiled and recorded that the shad from the south of the Yangtze River were transported to Beijing and cooked. The eunuch covered it with other smells, and the emperor gave it to cabinet ministers, who often had to eat it. It was delicious, but it was impossible to eat. Once again, the eunuch in the palace went to Nanjing to do business and angrily asked the chef why he didn't serve fresh shad. The chef said there is one for every meal, which means you didn't see it? As a result, the eunuch stared at the shad and observed it carefully The shape is very similar, but why doesn't it smell bad without it? July is a good season to eat shad, which is produced in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It is definitely no problem to eat in Nanjing. But Beijing is so far away, the heat is unbearable, and the southern seafood has long been stinky. It shows that the eunuchs in the palace are normal on weekdays, so I don't know about fresh shad and Tang.
Assorted fruit cups
According to the season, you can pay tribute to the Palace and eat oranges, Zhangzhou oranges, kumquat, Xishan apples, pomegranate and so on. There are many snacks, such as flower pies, candy, sugar cakes, tea with sugar, and some snacks with honey. Yuanxiao, eaten on the fifteenth day of the first month, is filled with glutinous rice flour, walnuts, sugar and roses, and cooked with wine, which is more exquisite than it is now.
Tang Pin cold drink
There are many soups when serving, such as Peony Head Soup, Chicken Oil Cake Soup, Mushroom Lantern Soup, Pork Longsong Soup and so on. Some are cold drinks in summer, such as sour plum soup, grape soup, milk and so on. There is a special Lu Ling drink, glutinous rice, old rice and millet, which is boiled in a pot to extract condensed mist.
2. Did the Ming emperors have a healthy diet?
medicated diet was not new in Ming dynasty. The drinking diet written by Hu Sihui, a doctor in Yuan Dynasty, is just an advanced health-preserving cookbook. Health preservation is also very popular in the circle of scholars in the Ming Dynasty, and some fresh information is shared from time to time. For example, Gao Lian became a female agent and a big cow in the health care circle with the eight notes of Zunsheng. Having said so much delicious food, is the emperor eating healthily?
Modern nutrition experts believe that red meat such as beef and pork can supplement human protein, but it should not be eaten in excess. The increase of fat can easily lead to fatty liver, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and so on. Usually cooking with less oil, salt and sugar is better. Generally speaking, steamed vegetables and boiled vegetables are healthy, and fried vegetables with less oil are acceptable. The most unhealthy thing is smoking, roasting and frying. This kind of vegetables cooked at high temperature is easy to produce carcinogens.
Every dish of the Ming emperors was full of meat, but few dishes, and the cooking style was just like that of Song Qifeng.
smoking, roasting, cooking, burning, boiling and frying have high speed and are too thick.
Steamed vegetables and boiled vegetables were not the mainstream of the Ming emperors' diet, and the food baked at high temperature was especially unhealthy. In addition, the Ming emperors ate heavy food, but tasteless food didn't feel good. They have to have more spices, such as sesame oil, soy sauce and sweet noodle sauce, which are bought outside the palace at a high price. According to the records in the year of Zhu Zhizhi, Ming Xizong's favorite foods are grilled clams, fried fresh shrimps, frog legs, dried bamboo shoots and a dish he likes very much. He stewed sea cucumber, fish, shark tendon, fat chicken and pig's trotters, which was predictably greasy. Eat watermelon in summer, and put some salt on it! This kind of food is unique, sweet and salty.
Then the question is, is such an advanced imperial meal envied by everyone? For example, the Jiangnan literati who lived in-are exquisite and elegant. Not only did they not have the envy of the teacher, but they also sneered at the food of the emperor.
Lu Shusheng commented on Beijing cuisine in Chongzhen Palace:
The material was roasted with fire, and the smell was pungent, which had lost its original flavor.
do you mean what it tastes like? It's all spices. Xie once said that the delicacies eaten by the emperor and Beijing officials were greasy and rough. What are they so dazzling? Daniel Gao Lian and Zhang Dai have similar views. These Jiangnan literati advocate a light diet. Although it is a foodie, it is exquisite and healthy, and it is self-contained. The other school is northern food, which is heavy in taste and bold in style. This implies the improvement of life interest of the scholar-bureaucrat class and the difference of food customs between the north and the south.
So generally speaking, the Ming emperors' diet was mainly pasta, with greasy eating habits and heavy taste, which was not a healthy way of eating. Do you envy the emperor's royal food?