Wu Dalang sells kitchen cakes, although it is a small detail in Water Margin, but it leaves a deep impression on people, so some people are curious: What is the kitchen cakes sold by Wu Dalang? How much is it? How much is it now?
Many people think that "cooking cake" is "baked cake", but this view is actually incorrect. To be exact, cooking cake is a kind of steamed bread, and it is a solid steamed bread. As for the price, it should be about eight pence. Let me explain the reasons in detail below!
1. What is a cooking cake?
before going on a business trip, Wu Song once told Wu Dalang that he should stay away from home and go home early to look after his wife. Originally, he made ten fan cages for cooking cakes, and later he just had to make five. The fan cages here are actually steamer cages, so it can be seen that cooking cakes are steamed, while in the Northern Song Dynasty, round steamed buns were called cooking cakes, and noodles cooked in pots were called soup cakes or boiled cakes, so it can be seen. Cooking cakes will be sprinkled with sesame seeds on the outside, with some dry coke on the outside. It is said that they are amber in color, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. They taste tough and elastic, and they are the favorite staple food of the people in the Song Dynasty. It is said that Song Huizong liked this food very much.
As for the "steamed buns" mentioned at that time, they were all stuffed, that is, steamed buns in the present sense. Sun Erniang, the female blade, runs a steamed bun restaurant, but her steamed bun is "human flesh steamed bun", which is a bit bloody. Some scholars have verified that there are many kinds of steamed bread in the Northern Song Dynasty, such as sugar steamed bread, mutton steamed bread, bamboo shoots steamed bread, fake meat steamed bread, bamboo shoots steamed bread, sugar stuffed steamed bread, spicy stuffed steamed bread, even fish steamed bread and crab roe steamed bread.
In addition, cooking cake is also called steamed cake. In the Water Margin, it not only appeared in Wu Dalang's story, but also mentioned in the seventy-third chapter, where the word "steamed cake" was used. At that time, Yan Qing and likui jy asked Liu Taigong to "cook the dried meat, make steamed cakes, bag the materials, tie them around, and leave Liu Taigong Zhuang". The steamed cakes here are kitchen cakes, so it can be seen that in "Water Margin", men eat and drink, not all of them are "cutting two catties of beef and playing with good wine", and there are corresponding staple foods.
The reason why steamed cakes were not called that later was actually because of Song Renzong. Because Song Renzong's name is Zhao Zhen, and the word "steamed" of steamed bread sounds similar to Zhao Zhen's word "Zhen", in feudal times, it was taboo, so steamed bread was renamed as kitchen cake, which quickly became popular.
therefore, people in the song dynasty used to call those without stuffing "cooking cakes" and those with stuffing "steamed bread".
It is said that on the day of Song Renzong's birth, in order to celebrate, some special "steamed cakes" were specially made in the palace to entertain the ministers. As a result, the ministers opened them and found that there were pearls and gold in them. Only then did everyone know that the emperor wanted to reward them in this way, so everyone stopped eating them, put these special "steamed cakes" in their sleeves and took them home.
The name of cooking cake was very popular among the people until the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty. However, after the Ming Dynasty, the name of cooking cake gradually disappeared. Instead, it was called steamed bread.
second, how much is a cook cake?
In Song Dynasty, due to the developed cities, prices in many places were set by the local authorities. One of the most famous examples 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 investigation 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 is about six pence, and then the profit of each cooking cake is increased by two pence, so the price of a cooking cake is eight pence.
Zong Rulin lived in the late Northern Song Dynasty, and the background of the novel Water Margin was very close in time during Song Huizong's period, so the kitchen cakes sold by Wu Dalang were probably eight pence each!
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 11.3 cents now. If this verification is reliable, then a cooking cake, about one yuan, is actually quite expensive, don't you think?