Whether it is TV dramas or some historical records, many materials confirm that the daily meals are delicacies from the mountains and seas.

That table of meals that are basically never repeated every day must be a life that many people dream of.

Especially Puyi once described in "The First Half of My Life" that not counting snacks such as fruits and drinks, the food expenses alone reached 14,794 taels of silver.

Just looking at this number, you may not be able to feel the luxury, but you have to know that the monthly income of ordinary people during the Qianlong period was about 2 or 3 taels of silver. This obvious contrast makes you feel the luxury of the palace food.

Royal Meals The royal family of the Qing Dynasty were all Manchus from the Northeast. After entering the customs, they still followed Manchu dining habits, so they only ate two meals a day.

The first meal eaten from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. is called breakfast, and the one eaten from 12 noon to 2 p.m. is dinner, which is the main meal of the day.

Of course, if you only eat two meals a day, you will naturally feel hungry. After the main meal, you will also add a snack. The time for snacks is not fixed.

If you suddenly want to eat something, the imperial dining room must be prepared and delivered at any time, so the entire imperial dining room must be ready to cook at any time.

Meals follow the ancestral family law of the Qing Dynasty. Every time when eating, irrelevant personnel must withdraw, leaving four eunuchs to serve the meal.

There will be an older eunuch who will serve the dishes.

Before eating, the eunuch serving the meal must first use a poison tester to test whether the food is poisonous. Then the eunuch tastes each dish to confirm that it is not poisonous before he can start eating it.

Just the complicated process of each meal already shows the royal extravagance.

Stills of dining in the Qing Dynasty. The number of dishes at each meal is also stipulated. There are usually 8 main courses and a side dish. At the same time, the imperial dining room will also prepare some porridge and soup. There are as many as twenty types of meals at each meal.

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Not only that, every time the eunuch who passed the meal gave an order, the dishes would be served immediately in the imperial kitchen, and some delicious dishes would be sent to the kitchens of the queen mother, concubines and concubines.

But most of these dishes will be wasted. The Manchu royal family has their own family rules, and they must not eat three bites of a dish at a time.

The reason for this rule is to prevent your preferences from being known to outsiders and to prevent people with ulterior motives from playing tricks on your meals.

A banquet between Manchu and Han Dynasty. Among the powerful people of the Qing Dynasty, Cixi was the most particular about food.

Cixi's daily diet showed the most extravagant side of the royal family.

Cixi had a longevity dining room dedicated to cooking delicious food for her. In her kitchen, there were 54 stoves for cooking alone. Each stove was equipped with a dedicated cook. All the cooks above could cook a wide variety of dishes.

There are more than 4,000 kinds of dim sum, and it must have taken a lot of effort just to find these recipes and the chefs with exquisite cooking skills.

Cixi's meal The pomp and circumstance when Cixi ate was even far better than the previous ones.

The total number of dishes in her meal can reach more than 150, and there are more than 20 kinds of snacks such as dried fruits and snacks.

Her meals were not placed on the table, but were delivered to her in boxes by her trusted eunuchs, and she took down some dishes without even moving her chopsticks.

A meal every day requires so much thought, not counting the silver spent on each birthday banquet.