A hundred years ago, outside the south gate of Wuxi, there was a "Mo Xingsheng" wine restaurant, and it is said that the first place in Wuxi to cook meat and bones to mature dishes and get welcome is here. The earliest cooked meat, only sauce meat, red stewed meat, pork, etc., customers pay for meat, naturally there can not be a little bone in it. Mo Peizhai, the owner of Mo Xingsheng, saw that the remaining back bones and ribs with a small amount of meat in the store could only be sold cheaply, so he worked cooking and cooked it into a wine dish, which was actually widely popular, which led to meat bones.
Cheap and good meat bones quickly spread at the South Gate. Thirty or forty years later, the meat bones in the south gate of Wuxi have become the climate, and the shops have dug the foot of the wall and the chefs have jumped ship, so that the taste of the meat bones has been continuously improved. In the 6th year of the Republic of China (1927), Wang Yunqing, the owner of the butcher shop in the north gate, hired Cai Xinggen, a famous teacher at the south gate, to cooperate with Wang Ronggen and Wang Alin in his own store, and opened a "Prudent Yu Meat Factory" with the landlord Bao Shuchu by the Sanfeng Bridge. This butcher shop, which mainly sold fresh meat, quickly saw the prospect of cooked meat business, and soon became famous for its meat bones in Jiangnan. The Prudent Flesh Bones of the Three Winds Bridge stand out from the Meat Bones of the South Gate. The famous food of a place is not out of the family feast of the rich, but from the "poor happiness" of the commoners, which fits the principle of "turning decay into magic", and the meat and bones gradually have the scientific name of "sauce burning ribs". To this day, the title of "meat and bone" in old Wuxi is still parallel to the "sauce ribs" of new Wuxi, and it is in the same vein as the memory of the tongue root of Wuxi people. Among the specialties brought by the Wuxi people, meat bones became the heaviest one, and the packaging was changed from dry lotus leaves to large red wax letters and gold ink printed cartons. The flesh and bones became more and more famous, and the stories came out endlessly, and the more later, the more magical the legend became.
In the early years of the Republic of China, Wuxi meat bones have replaced the "south leg" (Jinhua ham) as a special gift for Wuxi people. At that time, the people who came to the Wuxi Scenic Area to travel had rushed to buy meat bones, making meat bones famous. Wuxi industrialist Rong Desheng also appeared at the banquet table for Chinese and foreign guests, and he often went to The Prudential Meat House to buy meat bones, and once bought 1500 pounds. Legend has it that the young marshal Zhang Xueliang once passed through the Wuxi Railway Station after being placed under house arrest, and once asked ShenYu Meat Estate to deliver ten boxes to the train, and the delivery master also received 5 pieces of silver.
In 1934, there were 29 delicatessen shops in Wuxi, all over the downtown streets, and these stores each posed a gimmick in brand name and advertisement, which became a momentary event. Old Wuxi can definitely remember a number of authentic "Lu Manuscript Recommendations", "True Lu Manuscript Recommendations", "Deji Lu Manuscript Recommendations", "RenJi Lu Manuscript Recommendations" and so on, as well as "Old Three Treasures", "New Three Treasures", "Wei Xiangtai", "Wang Yuxing" and so on. Famous trademarks include the "Three Winds Brand", "Hehe Brand", "Xishan Brand", etc., which is simply incredible for an old city with a population of less than 200,000. Among these meat and bone shops, Shen Yu is still one of the best names, which is not unrelated to Wang Yunqing's meticulous cooking and good management. The firing of prudent meat bones is improved on the two firing methods of Wuxi North School and South School, and often advertises in tour guide books, postcards, and telephone books, even if rickshaw drivers pull foreign tourists here to buy meat bones, meat estates will have to tip the coachmen a little, not forgetting to expand sales channels.
In the old days, there were no shops that were big and did not do kung fu in credibility and righteousness, and Wang Yunqing did the same. At that time, The prudent shareholder Bao Shu did not immediately withdraw the stock money after the initial withdrawal of shares, Wang Yunqing remembered it, and every spring after paying off the stock money, he still sent a new year gift to the Bao family every Spring Festival, plus four pig legs and five pairs of pig feet, which were uninterrupted for 20 years until the Spring Festival of 1952, and in 1952, it was the "three antis" and "five antis" movements, and the Prudent Yu employees at that time believed that this gift should be liquidated to the Bao family. After learning this news, Wang Yunqing, who had long since retired, immediately found the staff to review, believing that it was indeed wrong to send this private gift from the store account, and paid it back to the meat estate. Even today, this matter is also between the two sides, and it is not necessarily due to the boss's private pocket, but Wang Yunqing's practice of paying for love and righteousness is definitely not necessary to say.
In 1975 during the "Cultural Revolution", Shenyu Meat Factory was renamed the state-owned Sanfengqiao Meat Shop, and in the 1990s, Wang Yunqing's grandson Wang Guohua wanted to re-establish the old brand, but found that "ShenYu" had been preemptively registered, and after several twists and turns, the Shenyu Board of Directors was established, and in 2003, the "Shenyu" old brand finally reappeared on Zhongshan Road. Meat and bones are so popular that nature has many secrets. The peculiar method of traditional meat and bone firing, which can't help but make people feel the wisdom of Wuxi people. Originally, the meat bones were not all immersed in the old soup pot to cook, but first in the pot rack bamboo pot pad, and then set up the cage, put in the meat bone, cover the pot lid, and with a kneaded flour ring tightly pressed on the edge of the cage, to achieve the sealing effect, so that a layer plus a layer, you can cook three or four cages of meat bones at a time, much higher than the pot, just like steamed steamed buns. Once the soup is boiled, the thick juice rises in a foamy form in a closed cage, and the temperature is higher than the boiling water, so that the stew is not only flavorful, but even the bones can be crisped off. And the old soup, also pay attention to recycling.
In November 1937, the Japanese army occupied Wuxi, and Wang Yunqing also fled the city. Half a year later, when he returned to the city, he found that the property of The Prudential Meat Estate had been looted. When he inspected the empty room, he found that the old soup in the pot was still there. The old soup is the soup left over after each boil, rich in spices and thick oil red sauce, no wonder it is not bad for half a year. With this pot of old soup, the Prudential Meat Estate has regrouped again.
In 1959, Tongyun Road's "Public-Private Partnership Real Land Manuscript Recommendation" was renamed Wuxi Delicatessen during the Cultural Revolution
During the Republic of China, Yuxing Meat Factory went to Shanghai to open a semicolon, and the boss used the same roasting but could not always burn the original meat bone taste. It took less than a year to close Zhang Daji. In 1956, Wang Alin, a master of roasting meat bones, went to Beijing twice to roast meat bones and participate in the National Food Exhibition, and it is said that the meat bones were listed in the state banquet menu at that time, but later they were not selected, Wang Alin thought twice, thinking that it was still not as good as the delicious taste of the roasted in Wuxi. More than 10 years ago, a large store in Wuxi also opened the semicolon to Shanghai, sent a senior master to carefully burn, and the city mouth also chose Nanjing East Road, who knew that in less than 2 months, it also returned home. It is estimated that the water quality of the Yangtze River in Shanghai is different from the water quality of Taihu Lake in Wuxi. The water quality is different, which is quite difficult to think. In fact, what affects the taste of meat bones is the difference in the quality of the hog breed and other ingredients such as soy sauce. In the past, the pigs were the so-called black pigs, which were native pigs, paying attention to lake pigs and sand pigs, and now the pigs are Ukrainian white pigs and other breeds, plus today's pig feeding materials have also become feed, and the meat quality is not as good as in the old days. In such a pattern, the selection of raw materials to ensure the old taste of meat and bones is by no means below the predecessors. The story of meat bones tells us that craftsmanship can be better, but if the raw materials are degraded, the meat bones are just bones with meat...