It's the Mid-Autumn Festival again, and it's time to eat mooncakes.
The most famous of the various types of mooncakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival is the Wuren Mooncake, which is named "Wuren" because of the almonds, walnuts, peanuts, sesame seeds and melon seeds in the filling.
But I don't know when, Wuren mooncake has become the object of mass diss, which has been complained about by netizens, calling it "dark cuisine", clamoring to let Wuren mooncake roll out of the mooncake world, if you hate who will send him Wuren mooncake.
How did such a bad mooncake come about?
There's actually a bit of a story behind this.
Chinese like to chase a long origin for their folk customs, such as moon cakes, some people have to say that this is the Shang Dynasty commemoration of Taishi Wenzhong's descendants of "Taishi Cake".
This statement is clearly far-fetched.
Because the miraculous Wen Taishi who assisted the King of Shang only appeared in the Ming Dynasty.
Even the title of Taishi was only available in the Tang and Song dynasties.
Of course, an IP that only existed in the Ming Dynasty could not take the IP of the Tang and Song Dynasties and run to the Shang Dynasty to invent any "Taishi cake".
In fact, before the Han Dynasty opened up the Silk Road, Chinese not to mention mooncakes, and even did not eat much pasta.
The reason is that the ancient Central Plains were an agrarian civilization, and after the grain was beaten, it was more accustomed to eating it directly after peeling it (the so-called "grain food").
As for grinding grain flour and noodles, making various cakes, and carrying them on the body for convenience (that is, the so-called "flour food"), it is the practice of the Hu people on horseback to make a living.
Therefore, in the extremely open Tang Dynasty, all kinds of "Hu Cake" became popular on a large scale in the Central Plains.
Because of its convenience in eating, it is particularly full of food and is very popular with the vast number of civilian classes.
Although the Tang Dynasty was known as a grand event, in the face of low productivity in ancient times, eating enough was still the main demand of most people.
In the web drama "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", which just caught fire in China, Master Mao Shun said: "One piece of money can buy two hu cakes", in fact, at the price of the time, hu cakes should be more expensive.
The original origin of the moon cake is actually this kind of Hu cake that was widely circulated in the Tang Dynasty.
Folk are so popular, of course, the upper class must enjoy with the people.
Since the royal court ate hu cake not to be hungry but to accompany tea, in order to understand the bitter taste of tea, hu cake began to add a large amount of sesame and honey (at that time, sugar making technology was not yet developed), becoming a dessert with tea.
To this day, in neighboring Japan, we can actually see a similar dessert called "Daifuku", which is actually a distant relative of the mooncake.
According to unreliable rumors, this transformed "Hu Cake" got its name from a mooncake because of an unexpected celebration feast.
Emperor Xuanzong, who liked Hu culture, was very fond of this small snack, and it was the Mid-Autumn Festival, facing the full moon, and Tang Xuanzong gave it a new name, moon cake.
And stipulates that it will be eaten every year in the Mid-Autumn Festival, so the "moon cake" will also be associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival.
When the mooncake underwent a makeover by Tang Xuanzong and was re-promoted from the court to the people, a problem arose.
Unlike the dignitaries in the court who are more concerned about the taste of mooncakes, ordinary people still value mooncakes as a kind of food-eating top-end attribute.
So at the latest in the Song Dynasty, the mooncake began to undergo various "magic reforms" in the folk, and gradually moved closer to the vicious-looking Wuren mooncake that we were familiar with:
Expensive honey was first invited out of the mooncake.
In the Song Dynasty, melon seeds, which were extremely popular among the people, were added;
The Ming Dynasty also added peanut kernels and almonds or olive kernels;
Add the sesame and walnut kernels that were originally available in the Tang Dynasty mooncakes;
At the latest in the Qing Dynasty, the creative idea of Wuren mooncake was basically fixed.
In "Dream of the Red Chamber", in the mooncakes eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival in Jia Fu for the seventy-sixth time, it is mentioned that there is a kind of "inner melon kernel oil pine mooncake", which sounds very greasy and is considered by many people to be the predecessor of the "Five Ren Mooncake".
It is worth mentioning that this kind of mooncake was actually rewarded by the imperial palace, which shows that similar tastes have been accepted by the upper class at that time.
What the?
You ask why mooncakes like to add various "benevolences" so much in the process of magic reform?
The truth is actually that:
In the ancient times of low productivity, most people had limited opportunities to eat high-calorie food, and taking advantage of the Mid-Autumn Festival to eat a sweet and oily five-kernel mooncake, instead of feeling greasy, there was a feeling of open meat.
That being the case, of course the fatter the oil, the more popular it is.
That's how the five-ren mooncake was saved.
For example, su Dongpo had a poetry cloud in that year: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, and there are crisp and pleasant." ”
Su Shi was a jinshi and a first, a person who had been an official all his life, and the sweet mooncakes that could be eaten were as beautiful as "chewing the moon", which showed how scarce desserts were at that time.
In fact, in the Republic of China era and the early days of the founding of New China, when Wuren Mooncake was really famous, this kind of heavy oil and heavy sweetness was still the mainstream of Chinese society.
So you see, it's not that the five-ren mooncake is unpalatable, but that the Chinese taste has changed.
(Qilu Evening News?) Qilu one-point reporter Wang Yu)??