There is a rule in the Ming Dynasty, officials to go to office, must be alone. Requirements do not bring a wife and children, not with servants and cooks, not with more than 80 pounds of luggage. There is also a perversion of the requirements, not allowed to ride a horse, not allowed to eat goose. This in the eyes of the food, incredibly sad. Because the goose is a luxury dish in the Ming Dynasty, identity dishes.
The emperor felt that goose food is really honorable. For example, Ming Xianzong Zhu Jinxuan students, huge love of goose, the imperial kitchen must be arranged every day, three sheep, eight geese. To filial piety emperor Zhu Yougong small students, think dad is not thrifty enough, every day to eat the number of geese to reduce, slaughter 1 sheep, 3 geese. Ashes Palace Records, Volume V, said Chongzhen Emperor and Empress insisted on fasting, 10 days a month (the first day of the lunar calendar, the first eight, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, known as the ten fasting days) meat ban, the mouth fades out of a bird. Imperial kitchen chef thought of a trick, will be raw goose retreat (through the "fade") hair, from *** to remove the intestinal filth, the vegetables in the center. Then put the goose in cold water to boil, take out, wash clean with wine, and then cooked in sesame oil, sent to the two old man and woman to eat, the two people eat a lot of flavor.
Official formal banquet, do not eat goose, guests are embarrassed. Shen list "Wandian miscellany" said the countryside to honor the wise old age, engage in rural drinking rituals, according to the level of guests, divided into on, on the middle, in the middle, the next four categories of seats, pigs, sheep, cattle and fish must be, the amount of meat in order to reduce the most important difference is that the seat has to be used with the geese, and the other grades of seats can only be used with the chickens. The upper seat of a large goose, price 2 money silver, on the middle seat of a large chicken, price 5 cents silver, in the middle of a chicken, price 3 cents 4 cents silver, the lower seat of a chicken, price 3 cents silver. 1 big goose in the upper seat can almost buy 7 chickens in the lower seat.
The tooth man (middleman) treats, pulls the relationship, looking for backing, eating goose to upscale. The goose as a gift, to take out, on the stage. Fashion Jokes" records, a showman, send goose to the school official, the school official said, I eat goose eat hurt stomach, this live goose I put where to raise which. So and the students to discuss, the students are not angry, Yun: goose (starvation) death is small, lose festival (festival) is big. This is the first time I have ever seen a student in the world who has been in the world for a long time.
During the Tianqi period, Nanjing sold geese, 1 500 Wen, 1 duck 200 Wen, 1 chicken 200 Wen, 1 catty of pork 40 Wen, 1 catty of mutton 40 Wen, 1 catty of beef 20 Wen, 1 catty of donkey meat, 20 Wen. The goose and sheep are expensive. 1 goose is worth two and a half chickens or ducks, more than 6 kilograms of mutton or pork, more than 10 kilograms of beef or donkey meat.
Ming Dynasty one silver equal to about 500 yuan today, a goose costs about 250 yuan. A goose weighs about six or seven kilograms, then each catty goose price of 35-41 yuan. Compared with the price of geese raised in the countryside today, farmers in the Ming Dynasty did not lose out.