Many people think that "baked wheat cake" is "baked wheat cake", but this view is actually incorrect. To be exact, sesame seed cake is a kind of steamed bread, and it is a solid steamed bread. As for the price, it should be around eight pence. Let me explain the reasons in detail!
1. What is making a cake?
Before going on a business trip, Song Wu once told Wu Dalang that he should stay away from his hometown and go home early to take care of his wife. Originally, he made ten fan cages to make sesame cakes, but later he just had to make five. The "fan cage" here is actually a steamer, so it can be seen that boiled cakes are steamed. In the Northern Song Dynasty, round steamed bread was called boiled cakes, and the noodles cooked in the pot were called soup cakes or boiled cakes. So, it's us who make the cake. Sesame seeds will be sprinkled on the baked wheat cake, and some dry coke will be sprinkled on the outside. It is said that they are amber, crisp outside and soft inside. They are tough and elastic to eat, and they are the favorite staple food of the people in the Song Dynasty. It is said that Song Huizong likes this kind of food very much.
As for the "steamed bread" at that time, it was all stuffed, that is, steamed bread in the present sense. Sun Erniang, a female blade, runs a steamed bun shop, but her steamed bread is "human flesh steamed bread", which is a bit bloody. Some scholars have verified that there are many kinds of steamed bread in the Northern Song Dynasty, including sugar steamed bread, mutton steamed bread, bamboo shoot steamed bread, fake meat steamed bread, bamboo shoot steamed bread, sugar stuffed steamed bread, spicy stuffed steamed bread, and even fish steamed bread and crab yellow steamed bread.
In addition, sesame cakes are also called steamed cakes. In Water Margin, it not only appears in Wu Dalang's story, but also mentioned in Chapter 73, where the word "steamed cake" is used. At that time, Yan Qing and Li Kui jy asked Liu Taigong to "cook the dried meat, make steamed cakes, bag the materials, tie them up and leave Liu Taigong Zhuang". The steamed cakes here are kitchen cakes. It can be seen that in Water Margin, men don't all eat and drink "cutting two Jin of beef and playing with good wine", and there are corresponding staple foods.
The reason why steamed cakes were not called steamed cakes was actually because of Song Renzong. Because the name of "steamed bread" is similar to the pronunciation of "true", which was taboo in feudal times, steamed bread was renamed kitchen cake and soon became popular.
Therefore, Song people used to call those without stuffing "sesame cakes" and those with stuffing "steamed bread".
It is said that on the day when Song Renzong was born, in order to celebrate, some special "steamed cakes" were specially made in the palace to entertain ministers. As a result, ministers opened it and found pearls and gold in it. Only then did everyone know that the emperor would reward them in this way, so everyone stopped eating and took these special "steamed cakes" home in their sleeves.
The name of cooking cake was very popular among the people before the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, but after the Ming Dynasty, the name of cooking cake gradually disappeared and was replaced by steamed bread.
Second, how much is the cake?
Due to the developed cities in Song Dynasty, prices in many places were set by local governments. The most famous example is the direct pricing method of Yin Zongrulin, Kaifeng Prefecture in the late Northern Song Dynasty.
When determining the price, Zong Rulin will set the price according to the actual survey results. For example, taking the most common cooking cake as an example, he investigated and studied all the costs of making a cooking cake, including raw materials and labor, which was about sixpence, and then the profit of each cooking cake increased by two pence, so the price of a cooking cake was eight pence.
Zong Rulin lived in the late Northern Song Dynasty, and the background of the novel Water Margin is very close to that of Song Huizong, so the kitchen cakes sold by Wu Dalang are probably eight pieces!
As for the current purchasing power, it is said that some people have verified that a penny at the end of the Song Dynasty is equivalent to a dime now. If this research is reliable, then a cooking cake, about one dollar, is actually quite expensive, don't you think?