When I visited Empresses in the Palace recently, the food in the play was dazzling and my mouth watered.

Braised pearls with abalone, stewed ham with fish belly, roasted mutton, duck soup, white jade hoof flower, lotus root soup, etc., are not only rich in dishes, but also beautifully laid out.

As a royal family, she lives a luxurious life. It is reported that Empress Dowager Cixi eats more than 1 kinds of dishes at a time, and each meal costs 2 taels of silver. Besides dinner, there are snacks and cold drinks. Milk, Poria cocos cakes, pea yellow and cream bracelets are all favorite snacks of Empress Dowager Cixi.

Food is the most important thing for the people, and the ancients were extremely particular about eating it. A Dream of Red Mansions describes hundreds of kinds of delicacies, among which the most mouth-watering one is the eggplant that Granny Liu ate when she entered the Grand View Garden.

Not only Empresses in the Palace and A Dream of Red Mansions, but also many movies and TV dramas contain mouth-watering foods, such as the iron lion head in Xilaile, the shrimp hot pot in Ruyi\'s Royal Love in the Palace, the sauce beef and daughter red in Water Margin, which make people want to travel back to ancient times and have a big meal.

But Baba wants to tell you that as a foodie, it's ok to cross back to the Qing Dynasty. If you cross to the Qin Dynasty, you may be starved to death. Don't believe it, even the emperor of the Qin Dynasty didn't eat as well as you do now.

eggplant, hoof flower, lion's head, tomato, potato and mung bean cake are all gone.

The staple foods of Qin people are millet (millet: millet), rice, glutinous rice (beans) and wheat. Most of the meat is game, such as wild boar, hare, and other fruits, such as dates and mulberries.

five grains: rice, millet, millet, wheat, and glutinous rice

Xianyang (now Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province) is the capital of the Qin Dynasty, and the main cities are Handan, Puyang, Chenying and Suiyang. The territory of the Qin Dynasty is mainly in the Central Plains, connecting the coast, and the geographical conditions are very suitable for agriculture, which brings great convenience to the agricultural development of the Qin Dynasty.

According to Mencius Teng Wengong, the ancient people used to eat five grains: "rice, millet, millet, wheat and rice;" We can also see the scene of Qin people's farming and labor in The Book of Songs in July. "Build a garden in September and reap crops in October. Millet and millet are heavy, and hemp and barley are used. " Bean is the bean, millet is the millet, and millet is the shelled millet, which was the most abundant food at that time and was often eaten by Qin people.

before Qin unified the six countries, millet had become the main food of Qin people, and its output was large, so it could be lent to other countries.

When Qin Mugong was in China, the State of Jin borrowed grain from Qin during the drought. At that time, when the State of Qin gave relief to the State of Jin, the grain it gave was millet. "With millet, you can see that the yield of millet in Qin is large.".

besides millet, rice is also available, but it is mostly used for wine making. In The Book of Songs in July, it is described that "rice is harvested in October for this spring wine". As for wheat, it is far less common than millet, and its position is not as good as millet.

when Zhang yi lobbied the king of Korea for the king of Qin, she told the king of Korea that "what the people eat is mostly bean rice and lotus soup;" If you don't accept it at the age of one, the people will never tire of spoiling it. " At that time, South Korea was located in a mountainous area, and the terrain was sinister. The grain produced was not only wheat, but also soybeans. Most of the people ate rice made of beans and soup made of bean leaves. When the harvest was bad last year, the people couldn't even eat distiller's grains and chaff. From Zhang Yi's contemptuous words, it can be seen that the Qin people were disdainful.

The grain is mainly millet, rice, wheat and rice husks, but most of them are steamed and boiled. There is no iron ware in the Qin Dynasty, and bronze ware is also a valuable item, which is difficult for ordinary people to possess. Most of the cooking utensils used by the people are pottery. Putting millet or rice into a clay pot and cooking it is a meal. According to the modern living standard, people in the Qin Dynasty have a very hard life, and they have basically no requirement for taste, so it is good to have a full stomach.

sunflower, epimedium, onion, leek and game

After dinner, let's talk about what to eat. In the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a vegetable garden in Qin State, which was called "Juyou". Although there were vegetables, there were very few kinds. According to modern people, the vegetables eaten by Qin people could only be called "Juyou".

Vegetables are scarce, but there are many kinds of fruits. In The Book of Songs Yellow Birds, it is written that "crossing yellow birds ends with spines" and "crossing yellow birds ends with mulberry", in which "spines" are jujube trees, which bear wild dates, and "mulberry" bears mulberries. In The Book of Songs in July,

Although the laws of the Qin Dynasty were harsh, it was not stipulated that wild animals could not be hunted. Therefore, friends who like to eat game will be very happy if they cross to the Qin Dynasty, provided that you can hunt.

There are many rivers in the area where the Qin Dynasty is located, such as the Yellow River and the Weihe River. Where there are rivers, there are fish, and part of the Qin State is near the sea, which is rich in fish resources. It is not difficult to infer from the geographical and natural environment at that time that Qin people could fish and eat fish.

The Book of Songs in July also described the scene of Qin people eating meat. "Sacrificing lambs to leeks" and "killing lambs" show that Qin people's meat resources are still very abundant, and the banquet of nobles is full of chickens, ducks, fish, sheep and all kinds of birds and animals.

Although the conditions in the Qin Dynasty were difficult, it didn't affect people's desire for delicious food. Qin people with a lot of meat also mastered a certain ability of tasting. In Lu's Chunqiu Benwei, they described their views on three kinds of animals: the animals in the water were fishy, the animals who ate meat were ashamed, and the animals who ate grass were smelly, but "smelly and disgusting are still beautiful, and there are various cooking methods, except

It's just that people's barbecues in ancient times were definitely not as delicious as they are now. At that time, spices were scarce, only pepper and salt. Although there were few spices, the cooking methods were very particular. In the Book of Rites, various cooking techniques were recorded, such as boiling, pouring fried meat sauce on rice and then pouring oil on it. This should be the oldest way to "cover rice", except for simple ones. For example, the cannon, one of the eight treasures, washes the viscera of pigs or sheep after slaughter, then fills the stomach with dates, wraps them with reed-woven foil, coats them with mud and roasts them with fire, takes out the roasted meat, spreads it with rice pulp, then puts it in a tripod for frying, and then puts the tripod in water for three days and three nights, so that the meat made is tender and delicious, and then seasoning it when eating.

However, although there was a lot of edible meat in the Qin Dynasty, there was one animal that could not be eaten, and that was the cow. In ancient times, the cow was an extremely important production tool. Anyone who killed a farm cow and ate meat would lose his head, so friends who liked beef could not eat sauce beef in the Qin Dynasty.

In terms of diet, the Qin Dynasty was the first in the Han Dynasty, but if it really crossed back to the Qin Dynasty, it was still very miserable. Although there were staple foods and a lot of edible meat, the food people often ate was still very simple. Although there was a small barbecue, there were no seasonings such as monosodium glutamate, cumin and pepper. Many vegetables that we often eat now, such as potatoes, tomatoes and cucumbers, also flowed into China after the Qin Dynasty.

Crossing still requires skills. If a foodie crosses back to the Qin Dynasty, the biggest advantage should be that he can lose weight!

references

[1] Peng Wei's Talking about the Diet of Qin People

[2] Ling Xue's Study on the Diet of Qin People

[3] Chen Liang's Study on the Ethnic Types and Diet of Qin People in Eastern Gansu and Western Shaanxi from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period.