Due to the stability of society and abundant supplies, everyone ate well, so there were many fat people in the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty regarded fat as beauty, and the young ladies and brothers did not need to lose weight, and it was a paradise for foodies.
Ceating methods
The way people of the Tang Dynasty eat in a similar way to ours today. The habit of three meals a day was basically popular in the Tang Dynasty; due to the great ethnic integration, the seats of ethnic minorities were introduced into the Central Plains, gradually replacing the original kneeling mats, allowing people to sit with their legs hanging down; the dining habit also changed from the shared food system of one person and one case and eating alone to the food system of being able to eat and combining food where everyone sat together. As a result, the types that each person tastes become more diverse, and the occasions for eating are more lively.
(Tang Dynasty) The mural of the tomb chamber unearthed from Chang'an County, Shaanxi Province is hidden in the Shaanxi History Museum
staple food
The food that can be eaten in the Tang Dynasty included rice, millet rice, and millet rice. Of course, pasta is inevitable, and the main force of pasta is various cakes. Wang Saishi preached in "Tang Dynasty Diet" that before Before the Northern Dynasties "cake" was a general term for various molded pasta except batter. When the Tang Dynasty, dozens of titles appeared based on processing methods, shapes, and whether there are or not.
The most popular and most representative cake in the Tang Dynasty was Hu cake . In addition to Hu cakes, there are steamed cakes, pancakes, mantou cakes, thin leaf cakes, pancakes, Hundu cakes, cakes, cakes, scattered cakes, sesame cakes, soup cakes, soubian cakes, Mingya cakes, sugar shortbread cakes, Eryi cakes, Shiao cakes, etc. The status of rice in the Tang Dynasty's staple food was slightly inferior to that of cakes, but it was still an indispensable main force. The popularity of cake food shows that wheat has replaced corn and became a major crop in the Tang Dynasty. corn is millet, native to my country. After wheat came to my country from Asia Minor, although its output was higher than that of millet, it was not widely promoted. The reason is that in ancient times, people washed and steamed wheat like millet and rice, and it was difficult to swallow the rough ingredient. Before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, wheat was the food of the poor and was even used to feed livestock, so that the nobles could eat delicious rice. Until one day, the epoch-making tool of stone mill was transmitted through the Silk Road or invented by a master. From then on, various crops could be ground into powder, and the food became more diverse. Wheat flour, with its silkier and more malleable, established its dominant position in northern China. corn has become increasingly niche, it is the main food for northern mountain villages and monks, or a symbol of officials' desire to practice integrity. This situation has changed again now. The price of golden millet is several times that of flour and rice.
People in the Tang Dynasty used cakes and side dishes to form the basic model of daily staple foods. To this day, many of the various noodle cakes we eat have been passed down from the Tang Dynasty.
Hubiao is the most popular among the Tang people. The white flour cake is sprinkled with oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds, bake it in the stove, and it is crispy after taking a bite. The key is that it has a long shelf life and is resistant to storage. It is a good product for ordinary people to stay at home or travel far away. The current various pastry cakes, fire-baked , donkey meat fire-baked , Roujiamo , and chewy dishes, tofu rolls, ham sausages, etc. are actually derived from Hu cakes.
In addition to Hu cakes, soup cakes are also a mainstream food. different titles such as souvenir, water cake, and ginger are all soup cakes, which means the shapes of them are different. The ginger is noodles soup , which contains shorter and wider noodles. In the Northern Dynasties' "Qi Min Yao Shu" said, "The squid is like a big finger, and one broken in two inches." This practice continued in the Tang Dynasty. Side dishes and soup in soup cakes are also important. Various noodles today, such as Qishan sauce noodles, beef noodles, oil-splashed noodles , Dandan noodles , fried sauce noodles, sour soup noodles , etc., all evolved from soup cakes in the Tang Dynasty.
A kind of cold noodle called " Locust leaves cold " was circulated in the Tang Dynasty. The locust leaves juice and noodles are boiled into noodles, put them in well water to cool naturally, eat them in the mouth to refresh and sweet, relieve heat and relieve heat, and bring the breath of nature. Today's various noodles, such as Korean cold noodles, Wuhan hot dry noodles, Shaxian sesame sauce noodles, etc., are all enriched and improved and developed by the Tang Dynasty noodles made by Huaiye Lengtao.
Legend has it that a major earthquake occurred in the Tang Dynasty, and another heavy rain was followed by the earthquake. After the rain, the sky was clear. The wife of a family guarding the tomb of Emperor Gaozu of Tang returned to the collapsed house to look for food to cook for her family. She found that the flour in the dough tank was soaked in the rain and became a drizzle, and it smelled sour. It was fermented without dry flour. In this way, the cakes could not be baked. So my wife grabbed a handful of earth alkali and sprinkled it into flour. When the was stirred, a smell of wheat overflowed. Because it was too thin, the clever wife of had to scoo up a paste and pour it on the cage and steam it. After steaming, she let it cool down and peel off a thin layer of the surface, cut it into strips of fingers wide, and then add vinegar, salt, and shredded cucumber. The men at home will taste it delicious! brewed skin was born.
After eating it, the batter at the bottom of the noodle jar became thicker, and the wife actually steamed , which was covered with big honeycombs, and it tasted soft and chewy. When the noodle jar is at the bottom, there is a string of slippery noodle skewers at the bottom. They are reluctant to throw them away, and they are steamed and turned into gluten.
The days afterwards are constantly improving. When mixing the noodles, add spinach, gourd, mung bean sprouts and gluten. The squid skin is getting better and better. On the Qingming Festival the next year, the wife of this family made two bowls of stuffed skins, one bowl was dedicated to the ancestors of this family, and one bowl was dedicated to the tomb of Emperor Gaozu of the Tang Dynasty.
Long King Li Jie was ordered to worship his ancestors. When the group arrived, they were already trapped and exhausted. During the memorial process, they were already hooked by the fragrant scented skin. I kowtowed my head and swallowed it voraciously, it was so delicious. So, the King of Long brought the wife back to Chang'an and sent her to the palace, and ordered her to teach her the skill of brewing skin to the imperial chef.
The kitchen materials in the palace are even richer, and in the end, the brewed skin became what we see today. Nowadays, all kinds of cold skins that the young ladies who love beauty like, whether they are dough skin, -meter skin , or even Guangdong pho noodles, intestine , etc., all come from the brewed skins of the Tang Dynasty.
Meat dishes
The meat of the Tang Dynasty was mainly mutton. Eating beef was nominally illegal and would be sentenced to heavy sentences. Although there were pork, there were not too many. The ancients did not master the ability to kill pigs, so the pork was smelly and fishy. Until the -Year-8 period, the grassland people brought the skills to castrate animals. The Chinese people mainly eat meat from the second senior brother, actually started from the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and were out of control.
Tangren actually eat beef occasionally. In the Tang Dynasty Duan Highway "Beihu Road" records: "Southerns took tender beef heads and burned them on the fire, then used soup (scalding) hair to remove the roots, washed them repeatedly, added wine, soybeans, scallions, ginger and cooked them when cooked, cut them as big as palm slices, mix them with sausage, peppers, oranges, etc., all of them were mud in the bottle and jar, and burned them heavily on the fire, which was called Bao." Put the beef heads in a pot and stew them until they are thin and stewed.
At that time, there were quite a lot of spices . The commonly used pepper, pepper, cardamom , cinnamon and tangerine peel were all there, and there were also some more complex seasonings, such as fermented black bean paste , and onion, ginger and garlic. People in the Tang Dynasty had to sprinkle pepper when eating mutton, but when eating pork, they had to eat it with garlic.
mutton has a strong smell, so pepper that can remove the smell of mutton was extremely high at that time and was very expensive. At that time, you didn’t have the talent of Li Taibai, nor the fat and majestic of An Lushan, but if you had pepper, you could bring two pounds into the palace, maybe Yang Guifei could have a bowl of wine with you.
mutton was consumed at that time, and the consumption of mutton was very large. The book "Cefu Yuangui" recorded in the book "Chefu Yuangui" The small court used 200 sheep every day. During the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the daily consumption of mutton in the palace was even greater. The monthly offerings of the royal nobles recorded in "Tang Six Classics·Volume 4" wrote: "... Give 20 pounds of sheep every month; 60 pounds of pork; 20 fish, one of them each; nine dou of wine."
"Qingyi Lu" says Wu Zetian loves to eat "cold-cultivated sheep" . mutton is similar to today's white-cut mutton . It is to cook the mutton with spices, remove the bones while it is hot, flatten the cubes, cut them into thin slices when eaten, and dip them in the seasonings and put them in the mouth. In the letter to give Zhang Changzong Leng Xiuyang, Wu Zetian said, "Zhenlang kills himself to serve the country." "Zhenlang" refers to sheep, which is enough to show her love for mutton.
Wei Juyuan worshipped the Shangshu Pushe and presented " Burning Tail Banquet " to Tang Zhongzong . Among the 58 existing dishes, 8 of them were related to mutton. The status of mutton can be seen.
In addition to mutton, the internal organs have also entered the elegant hall. "Tonghua Soft Beef Intestine" is made by mixing sheep bone marrow into filling and then pouring it into beef intestine ; "Puffer skin filaments" are cut into sheep stomach filaments more than one foot long.
Although ordinary people cannot eat mutton every day like the nobles, the frequency of mutton appears in " Taiping Guangji ", from the eating, selling sheep, slaughtering, raising sheep, and rituals, it can be seen that mutton consumption permeates all aspects of social life.
People eat mutton, boiled, steamed or roasted in water, and a basin of mutton with Hu cakes can be eaten very happily. Stir-frying was not invented until the Song Dynasty. The dish of onion fried lamb was not enjoyed by people in the Tang Dynasty.
The fishing and hunting trend in the Tang Dynasty was very popular, and fishing was very common. This was due to the good environmental protection at that time. As long as there were waters near the residence of , you could enjoy the fun of eating fish. "It was time to go down from Baling and fishing to the south stream." Wang Changling not only likes to participate in group prostitution activities, but also likes to fish very much.
The Tang people ate fish. One of the most popular ways to eat it at that time was katsu (pronounced kuai) . "katsu" refers to cutting the fish into thin strips. In fact, it is today's sashimi . And eating fish can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty, but it was developed in the Tang Dynasty. Another way to eat is to wrap sashimi into steamed rice, which is actually the earliest sushi .
The Tang Dynasty people got a fish and the first thing they thought of was how to make fish horn. The Tang Dynasty cookbook "Shenfu Jing Hand Record" sorts the fish suitable for making thorns: "The thorns are no better than crucian carp , followed by bream, bream, bream, and bass." Crucian carp tastes delicious, but has a lot of prickly, which is extremely test of knife skills. "Fresh crucian carp silver silk thorns, celery and green stream soup", Du Fu Mr. undoubtedly tasted the fish thorns made of crucian carp.
The Tang people wrote "Book of Cutting the Bolt". Although it has been lost, from the retelling of 8 people in the Ming Dynasty, only the knife technique "has "small shining white, big shining white, dancing pear blossoms, willow leaves, butterflies, and thousands of feet of lines. Most of them call the momentum of the blade and the wonderfulness of the thin cutting." need dipping sauce for raw food . "Book of Chopping" mentions the use of "syrup" which is roughly a mixture of soy sauce, syrup and vinegar.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t eat sashimi in the Tang Dynasty. There is a method called boiling. First, cut a fish into thin strips with special knife and knife method, prepare a pot of boiling fermented black bean sauce, pour it up and blanch the fish, and then pour it on the front and eat it with the hot fish. There are related records in the "Food Medical Heart Mirror" by Zan Yin of the Tang Dynasty: "Put the stew into the stewed sauce, and after a long time, add the powder and mix it with it." "One pound of crucian carp (made into stew), one cent dill, one cent orange peel, one cent marshmallow , one cent dried ginger, and one cent pepper (made into crumbs)."
Early than in the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese had already started eating crabs. When the Tang Dynasty arrived, the frog also climbed the Tang people's dining table. "Or some people put bamboo shoots in the soup first, then throw frogs, and when they enter the banquet, they all hold bamboo shoots and open their mouths. And the guest was playing with him and said, "Those who sell lamps and letters." """ "This is called "Tao soup." "Taiping Guangji·Barhat Four·Tao soup".It turns out that boiling frogs in warm water has existed in the Tang Dynasty.
chicken and duck were eaten by Chinese before the Tang Dynasty, and it was not rare in the Tang Dynasty. In addition, prey hunted in the Tang Dynasty, such as deer, rabbit, wild boar, and bear, often appeared in the Tang people's menu. Now if you want to hunt some wild animals, you must first be mentally prepared to stay in prison for a few years.
vegetables
Cooking methods during the Tang Dynasty were mainly steaming, boiling, boiling and roasting. Bai Juyi's poem "Two vegetables in the morning and evening, sleep freely in the day" describes that a meal combining grains and vegetables constitutes the daily diet structure of ordinary people in the Tang Dynasty.
Tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers, sweet potatoes, onions, peppers, and corn were not available in the Tang Dynasty. Even the common cabbage (草) and spinach (草) are not common vegetables, because the cabbage is of poor quality, and spinach is too expensive because it has just been introduced.
okra is not the okra today. has wide leaves. Because the stems and leaves have mucus, it has a smooth and tender texture. It was used in soup at that time. It was very popular at the time. In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen mentioned azure in "Compendium of Materia Medica", which was already: "Now people will not eat it anymore, and there is no seed." This kind of dish can occasionally be seen in Sichuan, Hubei, Henan and other places today, called "winter amaranth".
Now, this kind of dish is either blanched in water to make cold dishes, or it is used as a vegetable for serving when cooking noodles. There are still many ways to eat it.
cream winter amaranth soup
There was also a very common vegetable at that time, called xiè (pronunciation xiè), vegetables similar to leeks, with roots and leaves edible. This is the rare erectile syrup (jiao) today. The current way to eat is to chop the tender leaves and scrambled eggs, and the rhizomes can be made into fried bacon with tangerines, or remove the roots and rinds, wash and dry them, add white vinegar, rock sugar, and cold boiled water, and marinate for one month to make sweet and sour crystal tangerines. The way to eat it in Hunan is to make chopped pepper flakes.
There were still many varieties of vegetables at that time. Sun Simiao In the "Vegetables and Vegetables" chapter of "Preparation for Emergency Prescriptions", there were more than 40 edible vegetables listed. , such as purple-skinned eggplant, was widely planted since it came from India. "Youyang Zazu" records that "eggplant is cooked, and it eats thickly and has a stomachache... monks often roast it, which is very beautiful."
dessert
Tang Dynasty people enjoyed sweetness first, honey, At this time, there was a kind of high-end honey coming from the Diqiang. "Maltose" made of
grains is not superior in the eyes of the Tang people. It can be proved that it is not seen from the list of tributes from the courts in various places. One of the most important reasons for this situation is that sucrose has begun to gain popularity.
Sugar cane comes from India and the output is not large at the beginning. Emperor Taizong of Tang once rewarded 20 sugarcane to a minister, which shows how rare sugarcane was at that time.
Sugarcane juice can get a sweet drink. Dried sugarcane juice and mixed with milk can be made into solid "stone honey", and sometimes it can also be made into various small animals. After the sugarcane juice is boiled, it becomes the original brown sugar. Nowadays, the beauties like to drink brown sugar water for a few days every month. Indians only knew how to make brown sugar at that time. The Tang people removed the dregs from the boiled sugarcane juice and extracted a white "sweet" with smaller particles. This process was later passed back to India and became a model of cultural exchange.
The Tang Dynasty had a wide variety of fruits, including lychees, peaches, pears, apricots, dates and pomegranates, and cherries were rare. This fruit is a royal tribute and is not blessed to enjoy. It seems that it is not cheap now.
After the fruit is processed, it is soaked in honey and sugar juice. After a series of operations, it becomes candied fruit.
sugarcane juice becomes a thicker sugar slurry after being boiled. After the fruit is on the market, the sugarcane slurry is poured on it, becoming a fashionable combination at that time. According to records, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang missed Yang Guifei, who was no longer alive. "Hide 7 Queen put cherries and cane juice, but the Holy Emperor did not eat it."
In addition to sugarcane juice, cheese can also be poured on top of the fruit. "Qimin Yaoshu" talks about three kinds of cheese products: "sweet cheese", "酒酒" and "cheese". There is a dessert on the food list of
The "Tail Banquet" is called "Jushengnu". "Jisheng" is a type of matadhi , which is today's black sesame. This strange name was annotated by later generations as "Su Mi Han Gu". "Qimin Yaoshu" explains cold utensils, which are fried pasta, eaten during Cold Food Festival, hence the name.
"Spicy" is the product after frying "cheese". The general production process is to mix flour with water, cattle and sheep milk and honey, or boiled red date soup instead of honey, then fry and shape, and finally sprinkle sesame seeds. It is speculated that it is very similar to the fried flakes in the north now.
"Tail-burning banquet" There is a dessert called "Yulutu" , marked next to it, which means that the cheese is frozen and then carved and painted. is a bit like the various cream products in the pastry shop.
There was a prototype of modern ice cream in the Tang Dynasty called " Sushan " - it was to crush the ice cubes, then pour the liquid "spicy" on the crushed ice, and you can also insert some decorations such as flowers and plants on it.
Chapter In the mural unearthed from Prince Huai’s tomb, there has been controversy about what the bonsai in the hand of the lady is. Experts at the Shaanxi History Museum believe that it is the "saushan" decorated with plants to relieve heat in summer.
Tang Dynasty food focused on color, fragrance and taste. Whether it was dishes or snacks, it was full of artistic accomplishments. It was not only pleasing to the eye, but also amazing. For example, various pastries made with rice flour are made, among which " Crystal Dragon and Phoenix Cake ", "Flower Folding Goose Cake", "Glutinous Rice Cake", and "Cherry Cherry" are the most popular. Ordinary people eat them as desserts, and nobles and officials directly serve as staple food.
Among the desserts during the Tang Dynasty, the most famous one is the moon cakes we eat today. This kind of dessert made by adding fillings to Hu cakes is used by the imperial palace and folk to worship the moon god every Mid-Autumn Festival.
In addition to eating lychees, Yang Guifei also likes to eat apricots and pomegranates, and also likes to eat mooncakes and enjoys various desserts. These are high sugar and high calorie foods, no wonder they have become fat beauty.
Tang Dynasty was an era with abundant ingredients. With the tribute system and developed transportation network, the imperial or noble family in the capital Chang'an can enjoy the products from all over the world all year round. The clams on the coast of Shandong, sugar crabs in the Yangtze River basin, white fish in northern Anhui, dried ginger in Zhejiang, loquat and cherries in southern Shaanxi were all on the tribute list at that time. In addition, there are foods imported from "foreign countries": horse milk grapes from Gaochang, betel nuts and bananas from Annan, pine nuts from Silla, peppers from Magadha and other exotic delicacies.
The banquet activities of the Tang Dynasty were particularly developed. According to the season and theme, there are peony feasts and cherry feasts in spring; according to the festival, there are New Year's Eve feasts, Cold Food and Qingming Festival feasts, and Qixi Festival feasts. In addition to the daytime, there are night feasts at night, and the banquets do not end in the middle of the night. The banquet can be held in a private courtyard garden, or in a quiet and remote wilderness, or on a slowly moving boat. In the sound of oars and lights, there is a beautiful woman with wine among them. It is an elegant activity that scholars in the Tang Dynasty are passionate about.
The most famous banquet in Chinese history is called the tail-burning banquet. In the Tang Dynasty, refers specifically to a banquet held by scholars who pass the imperial examination or are promoted to official positions.
is called burning tail . There are three theories for : one says that beasts can become humans, but their tails cannot be changed, and only the tail can be burned; the second says that a new sheep has just entered the flock, and only the tail can be accepted; the third says that a carp leaps over the dragon gate, and there must be a torch that burns the tail to become a dragon.These three statements all have the meaning of promotion and renewal, so this banquet is named "Burning Tail Banquet".
is very familiar. Now, the admission banquet after the college entrance examination , thank-you banquet , celebratory banquet after the promotion, etc. These customs actually originated from the tail-burning banquet in the Tang Dynasty.
The unprecedentedly powerful background of the Tang Dynasty made various food cultures constantly colliding and converging in this powerful empire, and finally formed the brilliant Tang Dynasty food culture. The atmosphere of the prosperous Tang Dynasty can not only be seen in politics, economy and culture, but also in our diet.
