Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was a rather frugal man, and when the Qing Dynasty was founded, the emperor did not eat luxuriously.
For example, Nurhaci and Huang Taiji have always been based in the northeast region.
Since the winter in the northeast is really cold, hot pot has become a perfect winter companion.
The dishes they eat are mainly dipped in pickles, which are all foods that ordinary people can eat at home.
Qianlong, who claims to have written more than 30,000 poems, is a complete foodie.
During his reign, he went down to Jiangnan six times, praised the local cuisine, and when he returned, he asked the imperial chef to sort out the recipes, hoping to eat these delicacies every day.
Moreover, Qianlong also pays great attention to nutrition, and the combination of meat and vegetables must be reasonable.
Therefore, his table has both precious ingredients such as shark fin and bird's nest, as well as home-cooked dishes such as cabbage and tofu. Every time he ate, the imperial dining room had to prepare at least 100 dishes.
The diet in the palace not only has a card face, but also has a lot of rules, such as the emperor can not be called eating, but must be called "eating" or "eating".
Before eating, you have to taste the meal, that is, let the eunuchs around you taste the meal first, and then you can safely serve it to the emperor without any problems.
After that, the eunuch would shout "pass the meal", and then dozens of small eunuchs would appear, carrying hundreds of dishes in and began to present the plate.
When the emperor was ready to take his seat, the grand eunuch would first test the poison with silver chopsticks to ensure that it was non-toxic before the emperor could eat it.
The emperor is neither a big stomach king nor a rice bucket, and he certainly can't eat more than 100 dishes, so there is a rule in the palace, that is, the emperor can't eat more than three bites of a dish.
Therefore, most of the dishes were thrown away in the end, and even some dishes were served, and the emperor never moved.
Although the Qing Dynasty was a great cause at that time, it could not help but build it like this!
Moreover, in the later qianlong period, a lot of money was also spent on extensive garden repairs, and the national treasury could not make ends meet.
Therefore, after the Qianlong Emperor, the emperor's dishes at each meal were decreasing, and by the Xianfeng period, there were only more than 30 dishes left.
As the saying goes, the skinny camel is bigger than the horse, although the number of dishes is decreasing, but the quality has not shrunk, so you can still see bear paws, elephant pluck, lobster and other mountain delicacies on the emperor's table.
Unexpectedly, in the late Qing Dynasty, Empress Dowager Cixi began to take power, and this woman's life can only be described as luxury.
Legend has it that she was born in the folk, so she introduced various folk foods into the palace, and the imperial chefs went to great lengths to satisfy her tastes.
Later, she restored the number of dishes per meal to 81 dishes, bird's nest, shark fin, bear paw, abalone, she could not eat the freshness.
Because Cixi was extravagant and wasteful, his men also began to enrich themselves.
It is said that once Cixi wanted to eat mutton, the imperial dining room purchased 300 sheep, but in fact, no more than 3 sheep were used for Cixi to cook, and the rest were divided by the people below.
In addition to court cuisine, the diet of the nobles was also quite exquisite.
That is, the eggplant is peeled and diced and fried in chicken oil, and then the chicken breast, mushrooms, new shoots, mushrooms, spiced dried tofu and various dried fruits are diced and diced into the chicken soup and boiled together, and when the soup is dried, sealed in a jar, and eaten with fried chicken cubes.
A simple eggplant can be made by them, no wonder Grandma Liu will say after eating: "Eggplant has run out of this flavor, we don't need to grow grain, only eggplant." ”
In addition, there are also sour bamboo shoot chicken skin soup, sugar steamed puff pastry, pheasant melon seeds and so on.
Speaking of the Qing Dynasty, many foodies will think of the mouth-watering "Manchu Han Whole Seat" that makes people salivate when they hear the name.
It is said that the "Manchu Full Table" contains 108 dishes, of which 54 are southern dishes and 54 are northern dishes. Just eating takes three days.
And there is also a detailed set of serving procedures: before entering the table, you must first order incense, then pour tea, and then serve four fresh fruits, four dried fruits, four fruits, four preserves to entertain the guests.
When the appetite of the guests has increased, a variety of cold cuts and hot dishes can be served in turn.
The Yangzhou Manchu Han Seat in the Yangzhou Painting Record is the earliest record of the "Manchu Han Whole Seat", which includes a total of 134 dishes.
Among them, there are bird's nest chicken soup, sea cucumber braised pork tendons, abalone braised pearl vegetables, shark skin chicken sauce soup, crucian carp tongue braised bear paw, rice lees orangutan lip pig brain, steamed deer tail, turtle meat slice soup, etc., mountain treasures and seafood, birds and animals have everything!
Is there a feeling that you are listening to the names of dishes in the cross-talk theater?
Later, chefs of different cuisines across the country sorted out hundreds of recipes, which led to what we now often call "full table of Manchu".
Whichever way it is true, the "Manchu Han Quanxi" is the leading boss of our Chinese food culture, and it can also reflect the luxury of the Qing Dynasty from the side.
But the table of ordinary people is not so rich.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the flood in Jiangnan was serious, and there was no harvest in the field, so people did not say that they ate big fish and meat, and if they could eat enough, they would burn high incense.
Fortunately, at that time, there was a kind of food that helped people solve the problem of "filling their stomachs", that is, the sweet potato that waded through the mountains and waded through the water to Middle-earth during the Ming Dynasty, which is what we often call sweet potatoes.
But the nutrition of sweet potatoes is too single, temporary emergency can also be, every day to take it as a meal, will definitely make people face like a dish, and finally because of malnutrition and illness.
Later, during the Kangxi Period, the state vigorously developed agriculture, and the grains and grains increased their income in large quantities, and people were less dependent on sweet potatoes, and the food was getting better and better.
The predecessor of the Qing Dynasty was the Houjin dynasty founded by Nurhaci, and most of them came from the Jurchen tribe, which is now the Manchus.
In the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, it was recorded that the Jurchens "raised pigs, ate their flesh, and dressed their skins." Eating pork was actually promoted during the Song Dynasty.
After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, pork sat firmly in the top position in the meat eating industry and became the most popular meat, and the people lived a happy life of rice and white noodles with pork.