When it comes to delicious food, I'm afraid many people can think of many delicious things, and all kinds of delicious food in China have also experienced a long time of development and gradually formed since ancient times, and many people like it, whether it's hot pot, skewers, barbecue or soup. However, on the ingredients, there is a kind of special ingredients, that is flowers. The food made of flowers may not be touched by many people, and among these few foods, osmanthus fragrans is the only one that appears more frequently. But in fact, as early as ancient times, there have been many delicious foods made of flowers. Flowers can be used not only for viewing, but also for making many delicious foods. So what kinds of delicious foods were made of flowers in ancient times? Today, let me show you my love for the Book of Songs.

Qu Yuan once wrote in the Songs of the South that "when you drink magnolia in the morning, you will see the dew on it, but when you eat autumn chrysanthemum in the evening", which means that you can eat dew on magnolia during the day and eat fallen chrysanthemum petals at night. It can be seen that as early as the pre-Qin period, people ate flowers. So how did our ancestors integrate flowers into China's complex and huge food system from the pre-Qin Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties? 1. Qin and Han Dynasties

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, it was common for people to eat flowers, but the way of eating them was relatively simple, and flowers were generally used as wine, which may be due to two reasons.

On the one hand, there were not enough ingredients at that time, and people couldn't find too many other snacks except daily food, so they finally turned their attention to the most common flowers. At the same time, because the cooking level was not high at that time, people thought of "flower wine", the simplest way to eat.

On the other hand, people focus on flowers because in the pre-Qin period, people believed in "animism" and worshipped ghosts and gods. Then in the process of worship, in addition to the three sacrifices, flowers with beautiful meanings have become the first choice for offering sacrifices to the gods. In the subsequent Qin and Han dynasties, flowers gradually changed from "sacrificial objects" to "daily food items".

so in the Qin and Han dynasties, how did people "drink wine with flowers"? There is a story in Searching for the Gods that Jia Peilan, Lady Qi's maid, married a man named Duan Ru in the early years of the Han Dynasty. After the two married, Perrin always told Duan Ru what happened in the palace before. On one occasion, Perrin said to Duan Ru, "Every September, people in the palace wear cornus, eat Chongyang cake and drink chrysanthemum wine. It is said that this can make people live longer. Among these ingredients, chrysanthemum wine is the most complicated. When chrysanthemums are in full bloom, the flowers and leaves are mixed with millet and brewed, and they can be taken out for drinking when the Double Ninth Festival is held on September 9 of the following year. "

Mrs. Qi served Jia Peilan, and later became the wife of Duan Ru, a Fufeng man. It is said that when I was in the palace, I enjoyed singing and dancing with string pipes, competed for demon clothes, and became a good time ... In September, I wore cornus, ate tent bait and drank chrysanthemum wine, which made me live a long life. When the chrysanthemum is comfortable, the stems and leaves are picked and mixed with millet. When it is ripe on September 9 next year, it will be drunk, so it is called "chrysanthemum wine". -Gan Bao's Sou Shen Ji Volume 22

Although Gan Bao's Sou Shen Ji is a collection of folk weird stories written in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, another historical work, Miscellanies of Xijing, also records the practice of "chrysanthemum wine", so the possibility that chrysanthemum wine has appeared in the Qin and Han Dynasties is still very high. 2. Tang and Song Dynasties

If in the Qin and Han Dynasties, due to the limitation of cooking conditions, people still didn't taste delicious flower food, then in the Tang and Song Dynasties, flower products had become one of the most common snacks for the people.

In the Tang Dynasty, February 15th was designated as "Flower Festival". On this day, people would swim in the spring to catch butterflies and make flower cakes. According to legend, during Wu Zetian's reign, she had a whim on the Flower Festival and ordered people to make "Baihua Cake" for the ministers to enjoy. But this is just a folklore, and there is no way to verify it.

compared with the mystery of "Baihua cake", the flower food written by Lin Hong in the Southern Song Dynasty is more delicious and real. As a great gourmet with great style, Lin Hong left hundreds of recipes for delicious food in his book "A Clear Supply from the Mountain Family", among which several dishes were very interesting.

One of them is called Plum Blossom Soup Cake. The so-called Soup Cake is somewhat like our noodle soup today. Lin Hong said that there is a place called Zimao Mountain in Quanzhou, and there is an expert in the mountain who once cooked this dish.

When cooking this dish, first soak the newly blossoming plum blossom and sandalwood powder in water, and then mix the dough with the soaked water to make wonton skin. Then use a mold to make the dough look like plum blossoms, cook it, put it in chicken soup and taste it. After a period of time, you can eat soup and noodles together. Lin Hong also said that at that time, when the master entertained everyone, everyone could only get about 2 pieces of small noodles. After eating, everyone could not forget the lingering fragrance of plum blossoms, so that some people wrote poems saying, "Like a lonely mountain, flying jade floats on the West Lake."

There is an expert in Zimao Mountain, the Spring, who tasted this confession. Soak Bai Mei, sandalwood and water for the first time, and make wonton skin with dough. For each stack, chisel it with five-cent iron like plum pattern, and chisel it. When cooked, it is too much in the chicken juice, and each guest only spends more than 2 flowers. I can't forget May even if I eat it. Yuan Gang, who stayed in Yutang, wrote a poem: "Like a lonely mountain, flying jade floats on the West Lake". -

For example, there is another dish called Huaiye Tao. Before introducing this dish, Lin Hong first quoted Du Fu's two poems, "Green leaves are high and Sophora leaves are high, and they are taken to the Chinese kitchen. New noodles come near the market, and the juice is mixed with me. It is said that from these poems, we can see the way of this dish-first remove the tender leaves of Sophora japonica from the tree, blanch them with water, take them out and crush them, filter out the juice, and then make noodles with the juice, supplemented by vinegar and sauce, which is particularly delicious.

Du Fu's poem says, "The leaves of Sophora japonica are green and high, and they are given to Chinese chefs. New noodles come near the market, and the juice is mixed with me. If you are over-cooked, you will have no worries about adding food. 」。 That is, we can see the method. Those who pick the leaves of Sophora japonica in summer have little soup, grind them carefully and filter them, and make dough for scouring. They use acyl sauce as a ripe oyster, cluster fine bacteria, and do it on a plate, taking them as fresh and lovely. -

In fact, there is an upgraded version of "Sophora japonica leaf scouring", which is called "Sophora japonica leaf cold scouring". After the noodles are cooked, they are soaked in cold water, then stirred with cooked oil, and supplemented with seasonings when eating, which is a bit similar to the noodles we eat today. 3. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Whether in Qin and Han Dynasties or in Tang and Song Dynasties, the practice of flowers seemed a little light. In contrast, the representative flower food in the Ming and Qing Dynasties seemed to have a slightly heavy taste, that is, chrysanthemum hot pot.

At the beginning of this century, Beijing Culture and Art Publishing House published a book "The Record of Imperial Fragrance", written by De Ling, who worked as a maid-in-waiting beside Empress Dowager Cixi for several years. Through her retelling, we can get a glimpse of the true content of chrysanthemum hot pot.

According to De Ling, a kind of white chrysanthemum called snowball should be specially used for chrysanthemum, because its petals are short, clean and easy to cook. After picking the chrysanthemums, wash them and drain them. Then, a Xiao Nuan pot was served for Cixi, which contained half a pot of chicken soup in advance, with sliced fish or chicken slices beside it, plus sauce and vinegar seasoning.

After everything was ready, the eunuch lifted the lid of the heater and held it in his hand to wait. Cixi put the fish slices and chicken slices in the pot first, and the eunuch quickly covered the lid. After five or six minutes, open the lid, put the chrysanthemums in, and then close the lid. After a few minutes, you can eat it.

We can imagine that the fragrance of chrysanthemum, combined with the freshness of fish and chicken, must be extremely delicious. It is rumored that Cixi's chrysanthemum hot pot practice was later spread to the people and has been passed down to this day.

Summary

From chrysanthemum wine in Qin and Han dynasties to chrysanthemum hot pot under Cixi chopsticks, the practices of flower food are constantly enriched, and the appearance of each food is related to its specific era background. The appearance of chrysanthemum wine in Qin and Han dynasties could not be separated from people's worship and belief in ghosts and gods at that time; The appearance of plum blossom soup cakes in the Southern Song Dynasty may be closely related to the rise of the spirit of scholars at that time and their love for plum blossoms. The appearance of chrysanthemum hot pot in Qing Dynasty was the result of the continuous improvement of cooking conditions and the continuous development of diet pursuit.

Today, flower food is still loved by people, but we should know that this kind of food has accumulated and evolved for thousands of years and has been passed down to this day.