China's food culture is linked to power. Historical data show that the food etiquette in the pre-Qin period was quite complete. From the category of dishes to the taste of cooking, from the way of eating to the feast and so on, there are strict rules on the classification. Ding, a bronze tableware popular in the Zhou Dynasty, is a symbol to measure social status: the monarch used Jiuding, the Qing used seven Ding, the doctor used five Ding, and the scholar used one Ding or three Ding. The same is true of beans, Book of Rites. Li Yun contains thirty beans of the son of heaven, six princes, two princes, eight doctors and six doctors. There are strict restrictions on the consumption of food. "Under the Chu Language" contains the observation of the father's words:
The son of heaven eats too fast, cattle, sheep and tapirs are all available, the princes eat cattle, the nobles eat sheep, the doctors eat tapirs, the scholars eat fried fish, and Shu Ren eats vegetables. This kind of division comes from ancient records. Shangshu. Hong Fan said: "Only monarch is a blessing, only monarch is a power, only monarch is a jade food." That is to say, only the monarch can reign supreme and eat jade food. Book of rites. Wang Zhi said: "The princes don't kill cows for no reason, the doctors don't kill sheep for no reason, the scholars don't kill dogs for no reason, and Shu Ren doesn't eat treasures for no reason."
Until the Qing Dynasty, this level of dietary regulations reached its peak. Take the royal banquet as an example, the emperor banquet table has 4 dishes; The queen's first-class banquet table was reduced to 32; The second-class banquet table of the concubines has 2 people per table, the third-class banquet table has 3 people per table, and the dishes per table are reduced to 15 products. The dishes that emperors and queens can't finish are often given to ministers.
Although the manners are constantly changing, the general spirit remains the same: my official is bigger than you, my power is bigger than you, and I eat better than you.
The biggest official in the world is the emperor-in fact, the official is just the servant of the emperor. The biggest official is also fundamentally different from the emperor, and the emperor is the most powerful. Therefore, China's food culture is long and exquisite, which is also reflected in the emperor's mouth, Barry.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen said: China's modern civilization has evolved, and everything has fallen behind, but the progress of diet is still behind civilized countries. The food invented by China is abundant in Europe and America. And China's excellent cooking methods are not comparable to those in Europe and America. "This is extremely. At the same time, Mr. Sun pointed out that the maturity of this food culture shows the maturity of Chinese civilization. This is debatable. In fact, the reason why China's food culture reached such a peak, just as China's "sex culture" reached the peak, is a totalitarian system.
why? When Qi Huangong was tired of delicious food, he wanted to change his taste-let's just say, he wanted to eat human flesh in Qi Huangong. He had a courtier named Yi Ya, who was an excellent cook. Qi Huangong told Yi Ya what he meant, and Yi Ya immediately went home to kill his son and made baby soup for Qi Huangong to drink.
The king of China has such power that he can eat whatever he wants. If he eats delicacies, he will eat game. If he eats game, he will eat people's taste. The desire to eat food is infinitely magnified. So, it is difficult for China's food to dominate the whole world!
In the history of food development, emperors and nobles played the biggest role in promoting it. And the best food always appears at the luxurious banquet of emperors and nobles first.
China's imperial palace meals, called heavenly chefs, represent the peak of food culture in different periods.
Never tire of fine food, never tire of delicacy
Restaurants in China often claim to have the dishes cooked by the secret recipe of the court. Even street stalls often regard the round meatballs as tribute pills and the black yellow wine as tribute wine to attract the public. The advertisements for food and health care products made on TV often try their best to have something to do with the emperor, and often make the fake emperor raise his thumb and praise him repeatedly, so as to induce the public.
Even when it comes to eating, the martial arts novels always focus on the palace dishes. For example, in The Legend of the Condor Heroes, it is written that Hong Qigong, a beggar with nine fingers, spent three months squatting on the beam of the palace, eating the delicacies in the palace, and before he died, he did not forget the palace dishes, Yuanyang and Wuzhen stew.
Since the Zhou Dynasty, the royal family has spent a great deal of manpower and material resources on food, and it is very able to follow the teachings of Confucius that "food is not tired of essence, and food is not tired of detail".
In the court of the Zhou Dynasty, there was a huge and perfect catering management and service mechanism, including six institutions, including those responsible for food sources and those responsible for slaughtering and cooking, and the six institutions included 22 units, with a total of 2,37 people.
in Zhou Li. According to Tianguan, when the Emperor of Zhou dined, he "ate six grains, ate six sacrifices, drank six clear grains, used eight kinds of food, used eight kinds of food, and used twenty jars of sauce", and there was a saying of "eight treasures" in China's cooking history, which began at that time. However, the eight treasures at that time did not have the luxury and "extreme evil" of later generations. (According to the annotation, these eight treasures are boiled: cooked rice with meat soy sauce; Chunmu: Braised yellow rice with meat soy sauce; Canned dolphin: roast, fry and stew suckling pig; Cannon: roast, fry and stew the mother lamb; Zhen Zhen: roast beef, sheep and deer tenderloin; Stains: distiller's grains, beef and mutton; Boil: similar to spiced beef jerky; Liver net oil: baked dog liver wrapped in net oil. )
The powerful Han royal family certainly went further than the Zhou Dynasty in terms of diet. The emperor of Han Dynasty had the most complete food management system in China at that time. Among the officials in charge of the emperor's daily affairs, there are Taiguan, Tangguan and Daoguan who are related to food activities. They are "main diet", "main cake bait" and "main rice selection" respectively. This is a huge bureaucratic system. Under the official order, there are seven officials, including the official who is responsible for offering food everywhere, the official who manages the daily diet, and the official who is in charge. Taiguan and Tangguan each have 3, handmaiden, and the food expenses for the emperor and harem amount to 2 million yuan a year.
This expenditure is equivalent to the property of 2, middle-level people in the Han Dynasty. The daily expenditure is 548, yuan, which is equivalent to more than 2,7 stones of good rice, or more than 91, kilograms of good meat. The etiquette system of the Han Dynasty stipulated that the son of heaven "food and drink must have the taste of eight treasures." They are "rich and delicious, and taste the world." The change of festival has a great influence on the living conditions of ordinary people in Han Dynasty. For example, Xu Gan, a man at the end of the Han Dynasty, said: "In the summer when the inflammation is fierce", even the nobles feel that "the body is painted, the water flows like a spring, the fans are ineffective, and the banquet is fresh." However, the seasonal restrictions on diet and life were reduced to the lowest level at that time by the emperor and his empresses. In winter, the emperor can enjoy onions, leeks and other vegetables that are only produced in spring, and these vegetables cost a lot of money. The official "is covered with a house, and fires are built day and night, waiting for the temperature to grow." In the hot summer, the emperor and his empresses are "hard ice is often poured, and cold is replaced by Syria."
The prosperous Tang Dynasty is also a prosperous time in food, and the barbecue is the representative of this. What is a "barbecue"? According to Old Tang Books. Biography of Su Xuan: "When a minister worships an official for the first time, he makes an example of offering food, which is called burning the tail." That is to say, when the minister first took office, in order to be grateful, he offered a feast to the emperor, which was called "burning the tail".
how extravagant is the barbecue?
Qing Yi Lu records an incomplete food list left by Wei Juyuan when he hosted a barbecue. In the menu, there are 58 kinds of dishes and more than 2 kinds of cakes. There are 32 kinds of dishes, including bears, deer and donkeys in the north, raccoons, shrimps, crabs, frogs and turtles in the south, as well as fish, chickens, ducks, quails, pigs, cows, sheep and rabbits.
For example, at a banquet, there is a kind of ornamental dish, that is, craft dish, which is mainly used for decoration and appreciation. Among them, there is a kind of ornamental dish called "vegetarian steaming sound department", which is made of vegetarian dishes and steamed noodles into a group of Penglai fairy singers and dancers, with 7 pieces. You see, how much time and energy it takes to cook a craft dish. For example, a cake named "Gold and silver with flowers cut flat" is to pick out crab roe and crab meat, put them in a steam roll, and then cut them into small pieces of equal size. Another example is a dish called "Tong Hua Ruan Niu Intestine", which is made of sheep bone marrow and other auxiliary materials and made into sausages and other foods. The soup in the barbecue is also very delicate, such as "cold toad soup", that is, clam soup, but it should be cooled and eaten cold. For example, it is made of raccoon dog meat, which is chopped and eaten cold after cooling, similar to aspic, and so on. Limited by space, we can only give a brief introduction to the dishes.
These 58 kinds of dishes are not the whole menu of the "barbecue", but only the strangeness among them. Due to the long history and brief records, the exact overall scale and luxury of the barbecue banquet are beyond our real knowledge today.
the court diet in the song dynasty was also famous for its extravagance. Such as the emperor, "always eat a hundred products" and "pass meals in the middle of the night, that is, thousands." As for the banquet, it is even more extravagant to an amazing extent. Such as Shenzong, in his later years, he indulged in feasting in the deep palace, often "the cost of a banquet tour is more than 1 thousand." In history, Renzong once had an internal banquet, in which "ten points were divided into two parts", and only 28 clams were tasted. At that time, a clam was worth 1 yuan, which made Renzong "28, yuan at a time".
The court diet in the Ming Dynasty was also extravagant. For example, on the fifteenth day of the first month, the Lantern Festival in the palace is very elaborate-glutinous rice is ground into fine flour, then filled with walnuts, sugar and roses, and then rolled into wine, the size of which is like walnuts. On the 16th, the activities of enjoying lanterns in the palace were more prosperous. According to the History of the Ming Palace, "The world is prosperous, and the salt is extracted here". At this time, the vegetables in the palace include chicken zong in southern Yunnan, smallpox mutton tripe in Wutai Mountain, sea plants in the East China Sea, such as stone flower cabbage, dragon beard, kelp, antlers and laver. Artemisia bamboo shoots and rotten bamboo shoots in the south of the Yangtze River, pine nuts in the east of Liaoning, yellow flowers and golden needles in the north of thistle, Chinese yam and potatoes in Zhongdu, moss in the south, oriole bamboo shoots, Polygonatum sibiricum and black essence in Wudang. There are all kinds of walnuts, dates, magnolias, manqing and bracken in Beishan, as well as other vegetables, dried and fresh fruits, local products and so on. It is really difficult to cite an example.
Although the court cuisines of the above dynasties have been extremely luxurious, compared with the cuisines of the imperial palace in the Qing Dynasty, they can only be regarded as dwarfed, and thousands of cuisines only reached their peak in the Qing Dynasty.
imperial meals in the Qing dynasty, with the experience of past dynasties and the essence of the whole country, are extremely beautiful.
According to records, the meals in the Qing Palace are under the jurisdiction of the inner government, which is composed of three eunuchs in charge, ten eunuchs in charge and one hundred eunuchs. "They specialize in dining, eating in various palaces, seasonal banquets, sitting in shifts with attendants and so on." (Note 18) At that time, there were countless dining rooms in the Forbidden City. How many people are there in this imperial kitchen that served the emperor to eat and drink? There is no accurate statistics, only that there are hundreds of people in "hall of mental cultivation Imperial Kitchen".
The raw materials for the "Imperial Restaurant" dishes come from all corners of the country, including prawns in Bohai Sea, carp in Yellow River, shad in Zhenjiang, crab in Yangcheng Lake, shark's fin in South China Sea, bird's nest in Hainan, bear's paw in Northeast China, abalone in Shandong ...
The working procedures of court meals are particularly demanding, such as a "clear soup and tiger's pill". When making it, you need to stew the chicken soup for three hours, then peel off the skin, soak it thoroughly in the juice with seasoning, then use a special steel knife and silver knife to make it into paper-like thin slices, put it in the shape of peony flowers, and eat it with garlic and coriander powder.
emperors not only eat well in the palace, but also eat badly when they go out. For example, when Ganlong made a southern tour, a landlord named Hao in Huairou County, Hebei Province received Ganlong, and the daily expenses for food and drinks amounted to more than 1, yuan.
empress dowager cixi, the de facto last emperor of China, lived a luxurious life, loved ostentation and extravagance, had a well-developed appetite, and food was her greatest hobby. Her private kitchen "Western Dining Room" is bigger than Emperor Guangxu's "Imperial Dining Room", which can produce more than 4, kinds of dishes and 4 kinds of snacks. For every meal of Cixi, the dishes used should be put together with three tables, and there are often more than 1 kinds of dishes. Although her old man has a good appetite, she is really embarrassed by the hundreds of dishes, so most of them just take a glance and disappear from her eyes intact.
Cixi still loves watermelons in summer, but she only eats a little in the center of the gourd ladle, and she can use 35 watermelons a day.
What's more worth reading is that her old man made a mess of state affairs and was driven to Xi 'an by Eight-Nation Alliance. After I went to Xi 'an, I still didn't know how to be frugal, but I tried to assemble bird's nest and shark's fin from all over the world, and I still had to eat those hundred kinds of delicacies, which cost me 2 taels of silver a day. After the flight, on the way back to Beijing, on October 11th, 19, when he arrived in Houma Town, Quwo County (now houma city), Quwo County ordered Wang Tingying to do a good job in the two towns of Gaoxian, set up three palaces in Gaoxian, changed Houma into a post office, and prepared 45 mansions. There were eight treasures, eight or eight seats, six or six seats and tens of thousands of silver in the banquet.
as mentioned above, emperors in the Qing dynasty usually used more than 1 kinds of dishes for a meal. What about the grand banquet when they met festivals or entertained princes and ministers?
this can focus on the Manchu-Chinese banquet mentioned above.
The Manchu-Han Banquet is a grand banquet for both Manchu and Han ethnic groups. It is a banquet hosted by the royal family and nobles and the government in the Qing Dynasty, which is rare among the general public. Grand and noble in scale, complicated in program, full of Chinese delicacies, with both North and South flavors, and more than 3 kinds of dishes, it has the best reputation as an ancient banquet in China. Beijing Imperial Hotel once divided Manchu-Han banquet into six types: Mongolian pro-pan banquet, courtier banquet, longevity banquet, thousand-banquet, nine-white banquet and seasonal banquet. For example, the Mongolian pro-Pan Banquet is a royal banquet hosted by the Qing emperor to entertain Mongolian relatives who are married to the royal family. Generally, a banquet is held in the hall of justice, accompanied by Manchu first-and second-class ministers. For example, the courtiers' banquet is held on the 16th day of the first month, the day after the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, the emperor personally ordered the university students and those who had made meritorious deeds in the Nine Nobles to attend. The banquet was held in the Sanselfless Hall, and the banquet was followed by the ceremony of the imperial clan banquet. They all use high chairs, write poems and drink alcohol, and they are held every year. Mongolian princes and others also participated. The emperor used this to help his vassals, and at the same time it was a symbolic form of the courtiers' contributions.
Manchu-Han banquet gathers the essence of the world, and the materials used are not divided into east, west, north and south. Birds and animals, delicacies and delicacies are all in the mouth. In Qing Dynasty, Manchu-Han banquet included the so-called "four or eight treasures" of mountains, seas, birds and grass. Mountain Eight Treasures refer to hump, bear's paw, scarlet lip, monkey brain, scarlet lip, elephant trunk, leopard fetus, rhinoceros tail and deer tendon; The eight treasures of the sea refer to bird's nest, shark's fin, radix aconiti, fish belly, fish bones, abalone, seals and pike (giant salamander); Eight precious birds refer to red swallows, flying dragons, quails, swans, partridges, colorful finches, turtledoves and red-headed eagles; Caobazhen refers to Hericium erinaceus, Tremella fuciformis, Dictyophora, Donkey's Nest Mushroom, Sheep's Belly Mushroom, Flower Mushroom, Day Lily and Yunxiangxin.
During the reign of Qianlong Jiashen (AD 1746), there was a man named Li Dou in Yizheng County, Jiangsu Province, who wrote a Book of Yangzhou Paintings, in which there was a menu of Manchu and Han banquets.
Manchu-Han banquet can be described as the fruit of thousands of years' practice of China's totalitarian food culture, and it can be said that it has reached the peak that human beings can enjoy in terms of delicious food, and nothing can surpass it so far. -In January last year, some merchants spent a lot of money in Xi 'an, paying 366, yuan to eat a Manchu banquet cooked by a hotel. In fact, the so-called Manchu banquet is certainly not a real Manchu banquet, because some things, such as bear's paw and scarlet lips, are unlikely to be obtained. Then, it can also be seen that the real Manchu-Han banquet should be worth RMB.
At that time, Crown Hotel Golden Eagle Hong Kong launched French court dishes with nine courses, with a price of 698 yuan per guest. Everyone knows that French cuisine is the most insatiable cuisine in Europe and America, but compared with the Manchu banquet in China, the French court cuisine is far from luxurious!
From the wine pool and meat forest in Shang Dynasty to the Manchu-Han banquet in Qing Dynasty, the people of China can be said to have put out amazing feasts for the rulers.
From the 1,2 imperial daughters of the emperor to the 3, harem in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China people can