"Beijing Eight Pieces" is the highest level of palace snacks. At first, it was only provided to the royal family of the Qing Dynasty, and only the chefs in the imperial kitchen knew how to make it. With the departure of the imperial dynasty, the secret recipe of palace snacks spread to the people. Today's old Beijing should have eaten "Beijing Eight Pieces" when I was a child. Every New Year, "Beijing Eight Pieces" is also a good choice for every household to entertain guests and give gifts.
Beijing Eight Pieces, as the name implies, contain eight kinds of Beijing-style cakes with different shapes and tastes. Their meanings are: happiness, wealth, longevity, happiness, wealth, culture, luck and auspiciousness, which both elegantly and vividly showed the "eight happy events" in people's lives at that time. In the old society, eight pieces of Beijing snacks were provided to the royal family on major festivals, and they were also essential gifts for each other.
At present, the most common "Beijing Eight Pieces" is "eight cakes", but it is actually the lowest in the category of "Beijing Eight Pieces". The traditional "big eight" can be divided into the following eight categories:
1, a blessing cake symbolizing happiness.
2. Taishi cake, symbolizing the high official and generous.
3. Peach crisp symbolizing longevity.
4. There are square wedding cakes with double "hi" characters.
5, there is a silver ingot cake symbolizing wealth, which is a salty and crisp filling.
6. Like a book, shortbread is salty.
7. Chicken oil cake with the homonym "Qing Ji has eaten enough".
8. There are jujube cakes, which may mean that young couples have a baby early, and there must be men and women with flowers.
"Xiaobakuai" is made into various fruit shapes, including steamed buns, commonly known as Shoutao and Xiaoxing, which are homophonic for "good luck", as well as small pomegranates, pomegranates "blossoming", small apples, "peace", small walnuts, "harmony and beauty", little persimmon and "all the best". The prescriptions of small oranges and small dates also have their own meanings.
"Little Eight Pieces" is smaller and lighter than "Big Eight Pieces". In addition, there are "refined eight pieces" wine skins, which are more exquisite in materials and fine in workmanship.
The big eight pieces are eight pieces a catty, the square is round, and the square is not called square, which is called "begonia pattern" (there is a circle in the square, a circle in the corner, and the fillet is called begonia pattern), which means "happiness from now on"; Small eight pieces are carved with molds, eight pieces are half a catty, engraved with auspicious patterns such as flower baskets, peaches, begonia patterns, gourds, fish and silver ingots.
Eight pieces of "fine eight pieces" are all three-dimensional shapes. For example, the shape of longan is "reunion", and pears must be accompanied by oranges, which is "auspicious".
The general characteristics of Beijing Eight Pieces are: white color (slightly yellow skin color if mixed with soybean oil and rapeseed oil), crisp and soft taste, pure sweetness and saltiness, in addition to wine fragrance, milk fragrance, jujube fragrance, bean fragrance, kernel fragrance and natural floral fragrance.
At present, there are eight shapes such as oblate, wishful, peach, apricot, kidney, jujube flower, lotus leaf and oval, and eight fillings such as rose, banana, plum, sugar, jujube paste, red bean paste, red bean paste and salt and pepper. This is the new meaning of Beijing Eight Pieces.