Introduction: In Wu Dalang's cargo, what exactly is sold?
Even people who have not seen the original book of "Water Margin" can answer with a very affirmative answer - "cooking cake".
But what is "cooking cake"? That's an interesting question.
In some of today's tourist attractions, although many merchants hang up the sign of "Wu Dalang Cooking Cake", they often sell burnt cakes or pancakes.
According to this, some people say that the cooking cake is today's baked cake. Historically, however, can the two really be equated?
In the twentieth time of "Water Margin", Wu Song was aware of Pan Jinlian's nature, so just before the business trip, he specially explained to Wu Dalang:
"If you sell ten cages of cooking cakes a day, starting tomorrow, only make five cages to sell."
Wu Song's intention was to let Wu Dalang leave late and return early, in case the family "fire in the backyard". This sentence also reveals an important message, that is, the cooking cake is steamed with a cage, so its unit can be a "fan cage".
If the pancakes are baked in a kiln like burnt cakes, the word "cage" cannot be used, and the same is true for pancakes. Therefore, this makes the cooking cake can not be equated with pancakes and burnt cakes.
In the TV drama version of "Water Margin", the bridge section of Pan Jinlian getting up early to steam "cooking cake" was also restored. It seems that the Water Margin crew also carefully examined this historical detail that year.
The cooking process of "steaming" is easily reminiscent of two other types of pasta, that is, steamed buns or buns.
So, is Wu Dalang's cooking cake a steamed bun or a bun? Let's start with the noodles of the Song Dynasty.
First, the staple food of the Song people
In the Song Dynasty, the northern region was dominated by the cultivation of wheat and millet. Wheat is very common today, and huang rice, also known as yellow rice, "the old man has chicken, invite me to tianjia", it is said that this crop, today is mainly distributed in the three eastern provinces, the Loess Plateau region.
In the south, food crops are relatively homogeneous, mainly rice cultivation.
Therefore, in the Song Dynasty, the staple food of northerners was mainly pasta, supplemented by rice food, while southerners were the opposite, with rice food as the main food and pasta as a supplement.
The pasta of the Song people is mainly divided into the following types: steamed buns, buns, cakes, noodles, dumplings, wontons and so on.
Among them, the only cooking process that needs to use the cooking process of "steaming" is probably steamed buns, buns and cakes.
According to our life experience, the connotation of steamed buns and buns seems to be not very rich, the appearance is almost the same, and the types and styles of cakes are very much. So, is the cooking cake a steamed bun, a bun, or a kind of cake?
Second, the steamed buns of the Song Dynasty
Let's start with steamed buns. The ancient steamed buns are significantly different from the steamed buns that people eat today, which can be seen from the legend of the origin of steamed buns.
According to legend, the origin of steamed buns is related to Zhuge Liang, the Shu Han chancellor of the Three Kingdoms period. In that year, Zhuge Liang's southern conquest of Meng, because of the many evil arts in the southern barbarian region, the Shu army needed to sacrifice the gods in order to seek refuge. According to the custom of the Southern Barbarians, if there is a sacrifice, the living people must be used as sacrifices.
Zhuge Liang could not bear to kill living beings, so he had people wrap beef and mutton in noodles and make them look like human heads to sacrifice the gods. Zhuge Liang later succeeded in his southern expedition, and subsequently invented a food, steamed buns.
Although this statement has not yet been fully confirmed by historians, one thing is certain, that is, ancient steamed buns can be stuffed.
In the work "Yan Yi Zhi Zhi Zhi Lu" that records the social customs and rules system of the Song Dynasty, it is mentioned that:
"Nowadays, the noodles are fermented, or there is no filling or no filling, and those who steam it are called steamed buns."
What is said here is that the steamed buns of the Song Dynasty can be divided into two types: stuffed and non-stuffed, and their production processes are fermentation and steaming.
And if the steamed bun can also have filling, then the boundary between it and the bun becomes very blurred, and the main difference between the two is that the bun is large and thick-skinned, and the bun is small and thin-skinned.
And the first thing we can be sure of is that the bun is not a cooker. Or in the book "The Curse of the Swallow Wing", such a story is recorded:
On the day of Emperor Renzong's birth, Emperor Zhenzong was overjoyed, and Zaichen was called He. Buns were produced in the palace to give to their subordinates, among which were all golden beads. ”
Emperor Zhenzong of Song was very happy to have a new crown prince, and the ministers came to congratulate him, and the emperor asked the palace to cook buns for them. The ministers found that the "filling" of the bun was all gold beads.
It can be seen that buns were already a food with an exclusive name in the Song Dynasty, and there is no need to name them "cooking cakes".
So, can it be assumed that the cooker is a kind of steamed bun?
I'm afraid not.
Because in some historical sources, there is a juxtaposition of cooking cakes and steamed buns, which is enough to show that they were not the same food at that time, such as
(1) In the "Record of Dreams", there is a record of "selling sugar porridge, burnt bread, scorched steamed buns, cooking cakes, spicy vegetable cakes, spring cakes, and dim sum at noon".
(2) In the "Miscellaneous Records of Jing Kang" written by Huang Chaoying of the Song Dynasty, it is said: "The cage steamer and the eater call it steamed cake, and the steamed bun is called the cage cake." ”
(3) The Song Dynasty Hu Zai's "Yu Yin Cong" records: "Spring and autumn cooking cakes, summer cold tao (over the water), winter steamed buns." ”
Therefore, in the context of the Song people, the cooking cake is not a steamed bun. If you want to find the real body of the cooking cake, you can only start with the cake.
3. Cakes from the Song Dynasty
According to the different cooking methods, the cakes of the Song Dynasty can be divided into soup cakes, burnt cakes, pancakes and steamed cakes.
Soup cakes are boiled noodle soup noodles, eaten with noodles in soup, similar to today's Xi'an lamb steamed buns.
Burnt cakes, also known as boiling cakes in ancient times, are divided into Han cakes and hu cakes. Among them, The Han cake is said to have been invented by Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, and is a kind of fermented cake without any ingredients.
Hu cake, as the name suggests, is a kind of cake introduced to the Central Plains from the western region, which needs to be baked in the oven, so it is also called burnt cake, similar to today's baked cake.
Pancakes, as today, require a chainsk or pancake bell to fry over a fire and cook the pasta.
From the perspective of cooking technology, the above are not cooking cakes. Finally, let's focus on steamed cakes.
In a literal sense, steamed cakes are steamed bread, which is similar to the cooking cakes in "Water Margin".
In the "Miscellaneous Records of the Green Box" written by the Song Dynasty Wu Chuhou, there is such a sentence: "The Temple of Renzong is secret, the language is nearly steamed, and now the steamed cake is called a cooking cake in the inner courtyard." ”
According to this historical record, because it was necessary to avoid Zhao Zhen of Song Renzong at that time, the imperial court called "steamed cake" "cooking cake". In the Henan dialect, it is indeed easy to confuse "zhen" with "zheng".
Here, steamed bread and cooking cakes are directly equated. And what is the process of making steamed cakes?
In the Ming Dynasty's "Compendium of Materia Medica," Li Shizhen once listed a separate chapter on "steamed cakes" and said: "There are many foods for wheat noodle cultivation, but steamed cakes are the oldest, and they are made of fermented hair into a single side."
It can be seen that steamed cakes have a long history, it is similar to steamed bread, and it is also made by steaming fermented pasta.
Therefore, in addition to excluding pasta such as steamed buns, buns, pancakes, and burnt cakes, I think that steamed cakes are the cooking cakes of the Song Dynasty. Wu Dalang did not sell steamed buns, but steamed cakes.
Conclusion: However, it is worth mentioning that with the evolution of history, many foods in China's history, such as steamed bread and steamed cakes, have a certain degree of overlap and confusion in terms of names and concepts.
It can only be said that within a certain historical period, there may be differences between them. But as the times evolved, the foods themselves changed with the times.
Therefore, out of the specific historical era, it is of no practical significance to compare what food is called "steamed bread" and what is called "cooking cake".
References: "YanYi Zhi Zhi Zhi Lu", "Mengliang Lu", "Jing Kang Zhi Su Miscellaneous Records", "Yu Yin Cong", "Qing Box Miscellaneous Records", "Compendium of Materia Medica", "Northern Song Dynasty Tokyo Food Culture Research"