Now, there are many kinds of crops. In addition to the food that often appears on our table, all kinds of strange foods are also overwhelming. It can be said that there is nothing you can't eat, only the unexpected. This richness often extends to costume film and television dramas. Such scenes can often be seen in TV dramas. No matter which dynasty, the protagonists are faced with all kinds of dishes, and the audience is salivating and can't help but sigh that the food of the ancients is really good. But in fact, Qin Shihuang, who unified the six countries, couldn't even eat a tomato scrambled egg.
Let's cross the long river of history and walk into the kitchen of the ancients to have a look.
Staple food
Noodles only appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty in the primitive society of rice.
China wild rice has been domesticated as cultivated rice for a long time. There are many Neolithic rice remains found in China at present, which are determined by carbon 14. Among them, the rice remains of Yuchanyan Site in Daoxian County, Hunan Province, Wannian Xianren Cave in Jiangxi Province and Diaotongyuan Site are more than 1 10,000 years ago, and the rice remains of Shangshan Site in Pujiang, Zhejiang Province are more than 9,000 years ago. The rice remains found in Hemudu Site in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province are even more amazing and rich, with a history of 70,000 years.
Obviously, with the synchronization of rice domestication and cultivation, rice has a very long edible history, and because it can be steamed into rice and rice porridge, it can also be made into wine, noodles and cakes, and it has gradually become one of the protagonists in the daily diet in China, especially in southern China.
Rice is native, but another staple crop, wheat, is an "alien". Associate Professor He from China Institute of Agricultural Civilization of Nanjing Agricultural University told the Science and Technology Daily reporter that wheat was introduced to China through the "Eurasian Prairie" or the "pre-Silk Road" as early as the Xia Dynasty. Moreover, when wheat first appeared, people could not eat steamed bread and noodles, because the appearance of pasta was related to the development of wheat production and processing technology.
Rotary grinding was gradually popularized in the Yellow River valley at the latest in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. The appearance of powder screening tools and their cooperation with rotary grinding also made obvious progress in flour processing technology in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Therefore, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the embryonic form of China wheat flour noodles had already existed, which was collectively called cakes at that time. Because noodles are cooked in soup, they are also called soup cakes. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were cakes in Liu Xi's Interpretation of Famous Foods. In the Book of Qi Yaomin written by Jia Sixie in the Northern Wei Dynasty, it is a kind of boiled food with broken feet and as thin as leek leaves. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, there were 10 kinds of noodles in the food market, including noodles with meat, noodles fried with salt, noodles cooked with tung skin, and even the earliest "dried noodles". In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were more varieties of noodles, including Lamian Noodles, Lamian Noodles, Daoxiao Noodles, spiced noodles, Bazhen noodles, Dandan Noodles, Yifu noodles, Zhajiang noodles and Regan Noodles, which were the basis of many modern noodles.
In addition to noodles, people in the Eastern Han Dynasty could also eat steamed bread, because fermentation technology had been widely used in pasta production at this time. He said that although the original steamed bread was smooth hemispherical and made of fermented dough, unlike today's steamed bread, it may be stuffed. Probably in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, solid steamed bread appeared, which became the direct source of the staple food steamed bread in northern China today.
Beer, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Natural Science History, Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that the popularity of pasta enriched the types of food, changed the diet structure in the northern region, and the types of staple foods began to enrich, gradually forming a unique pasta culture.
tableware
Chinese chives, scrambled eggs, peppers and potatoes were introduced in the Western Han Dynasty and in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
At present, the main dish we eat is stir-frying, and the stir-frying technology in China cooking has a long history, which may have sprouted in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, but further research is needed. However, the method of frying should have appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. He said that at this time, China already had the material conditions for "frying": a thin copper pot, animal fat, and a knife that can cut meat into filaments and slices. Beer pointed out that at least in the Song Dynasty, the cooking method was very mature.
If you like to eat "scrambled eggs with leeks", then you will have a good time, because leeks are a native vegetable in China and can be eaten in the Western Han Dynasty, because this dish has already appeared in the salt and iron theory of the Western Han Dynasty. Rape, gourd and melon have been planted in China since prehistoric times. In addition, radish, wax gourd, loofah, bamboo shoots, onions and Jiang Ye are the specialties of China.
But if you like home cooking such as scrambled eggs with tomatoes, shredded potatoes, and diced Chili chicken, it may have to wait until the Ming and Qing Dynasties or even the Republic of China. Because tomatoes, potatoes and peppers are "exotic". In addition, garlic, cucumber, spinach, carrots, pumpkins, purple cabbage, cauliflower and so on. There are also people from other places.
Beer introduced that tomatoes, potatoes and peppers are all American crops, and they were basically introduced to China from the southeast coast by sea during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Their introduction enriched the varieties of vegetables in China, but their functions were different. The introduction of potatoes mainly played a supplementary role in some areas, feeding more people; Tomatoes were mainly used as ornamental crops in the early days, and only entered the vegetable garden in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, and their large-scale development was after the founding of New China. The introduction of pepper has played a subversive role in China's diet, which has led to the formation of a food culture that does not eat spicy food in some parts of southwest China.
In order to distinguish the approximate time when a vegetable appeared in China, we can also see some clues from its name. For example, the word system of "Hu" is pumpkin, walnut, bean, pepper, carrot and so on. It was mainly introduced from the northwest during the Han and Jin Dynasties. "Fan" word system: tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, guava and papaya were mostly brought in by "Fan boats" from the Southern Song Dynasty to the Yuan and Ming Dynasties; "foreign" word system: onion, cabbage (cabbage) and so on. Most of them were introduced from the Qing Dynasty and even modern times.
Fruit products
Peach, plum and apricot were cultivated in the pre-Qin period, and "foreign fruit" was popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
It will be more perfect to eat some fruit after a full meal. Although vegetables were a little scarce in ancient China, there were many fruits. He Hong Zhong said that there are only coconuts, bananas, pineapples, durians, grapes, pomegranates and strawberries. It is very common in our daily life. It is imported from abroad, and most of the others are made in China.
According to historical records, artificial cultivation and planting of fruit trees began in the pre-Qin period. In the Book of Songs, Classic of Mountains and Seas and other ancient books, China traditional fruit trees such as peaches, plums, pears, dates and plums all appeared in the orchards at that time. In Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Yunnan, Shanxi, Hubei and other places, ancient peach stones have been unearthed. From the Shang Dynasty to the Qin and Han Dynasties, we can see how long China people have eaten peaches.
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the consumption of fruits increased greatly. Sima Qian's Biography of Historical Records and Huo Zhi records: "An Qian Yi Shu is early; Yan, Qin Li; Thousands of oranges in Shu, Han and Jiangling; There are Huaibei and Changshan in the south and thousands of trees in the river ... "This shows that dates, chestnuts, oranges and pears were widely planted at that time.
In the pre-Qin period, exotic fruits gradually entered the Central Plains, such as grapes. In modern botanical classification, there are three main grape populations: Eurasian species, East Asian species and American species. Wild grapes are common in China. However, most of the grapes we are familiar with, eat and cultivate every day are Eurasian species from Western Europe and Asia. He pointed out that according to the current archaeology, literature and research, the time when grapes were introduced was in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and the time when they entered the Central Plains was probably in the Warring States Period.
Although the ancients could eat grapes long ago, if they wanted to eat watermelon in summer, they had to wait until after the Tang Dynasty. Watermelon originated in the arid desert of Africa, spread to Asia Minor through Egypt, and then spread eastward to India through Persia. North through Afghanistan, across the Pamirs, along the Silk Road into the Western Regions and Uighur, Beer said that China began to grow watermelons before 953 AD (three years after the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Zhou). During the Song Dynasty (960-1279), watermelons spread all over China from north to south.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, people could choose more fruits, and "foreign fruits" gradually became popular. Pineapple, papaya and annona were all introduced during this period, among which pineapple was the most successful.
Pineapple (alias pineapple, king pear and yellow pear) originated in the dry tropical mountainous areas of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay in South America and was domesticated by Indians. /kloc-was brought to Macau by the Portuguese in 0/605, and then introduced to Fujian and Taiwan Province provinces through Guangdong. There are records of "Yellow Pear" in Guangdong Dongguan County Records (1639) and Qian Lin Daoguang Terrace (1687). /kloc-spread to Guangxi at the end of 0/8, and/kloc-spread to Yunnan at the beginning of 0/9.