Bacon and pork you're definitely confused

"Source of this article: China News Network"

Bacon and pork you're definitely confused

People often say, "A mouthful of wax is the year." "Whenever it comes to the cold winter season, people will start to be busy curing bacon, and as the pace of the year approaches, the aroma of bacon seems to be getting stronger and stronger.

Bacon is popular with the common people, and today's people eat bacon, and so did the ancients. Chinese has a long history of making wax flavors. However, in the earliest days, bacon was not named after the season, but because of the way it was made.

In ancient times, "bacon" was read as "xi", referring to a method of meat processing: that is, fresh meat was pickled in salt or sauce and then dried, which was "bacon". For example, the Tang Dynasty literary scholar Liu Zongyuan mentioned in "The Snake Catcher's Saying": "Naturally, the wax is taken as bait", and the "wax" here means air drying. The meaning of "la" is what we are talking about today, and the meat prepared during the lunar month is called "pork". Therefore, in ancient times, "bacon" and "pork" were inevitably different.

Regarding the origin of bacon, it is difficult to verify now, but there are many legends, for example: 4600 years ago, the Yellow Emperor tribe united with the Yandi tribe, and the Xuanyu tribe broke out in the battle of Zhuolu in the ancient Zhuolu land, and finally, Xuanyu lost back to the south and fled to Hunan, and his army carried bacon marinated and dried with meat salt to roam in the mountains. Since then, the practice of bacon has been passed down in the southwest.

Legend is not a history of faith after all, but in ancient times, when there was a lack of preservation technology, making air-dried and smoked bacon could prolong the storage time of meat and be easy to carry, so "wax" has also become the most used processing method when people process meat food.

In the pre-Qin classic "I Ching", it is mentioned that "the sun is in the sun and the fire is burned, and the bacon is called bacon", which means that the meat is placed in the sun to dry off the moisture and then baked in the fire, which is called bacon. The I Ching was written in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, which shows conservative estimates that bacon also has a history of at least nearly three thousand years. Confucius in the Spring and Autumn Period liked to eat bacon. The Analects of ShuEr mentions: "Zi Yue: 'I have not tasted nothing if I restrain myself above. Therefore, Confucius means: "I have never failed to give teachings to anyone who takes the initiative to give me ten pieces of bacon as a greeting gift." However, the meaning of "bundle" has always been controversial, and some scholars believe that the bundle may only refer to gifts, not necessarily ten pieces of bacon.

However, zhu Xi, the great Confucian of the Southern Song Dynasty, believed that the bundle was ten pieces of bacon, and said: "The one who bundles the thinnest of them." It means to take "ten pieces of bacon" to pay tuition, which is too cheap, so it belongs to the "thin gift". However, the Spring and Autumn Period of Confucius's life and the Southern Song Dynasty where Zhu Xi lived were separated by more than 1,500 years, and perhaps we can speculate that in the Spring and Autumn Period, when the level of productivity was not high, it should not be easy to come up with "ten pieces of bacon".

However, through Zhu Xi's words, we can at least speculate that in the Southern Song Dynasty era in which Zhu Xi lived, bacon had already entered the homes of ordinary people. A Song Dynasty official named Zheng Gangzhong once wrote a poem: "Eating bacon is still stingy, and eating is in the festival of desire." "It means that even eating bacon is still very stingy, and it is even more frugal in terms of diet." Eating bacon can be described as "stingy", which shows that for many ordinary people of the Song Dynasty, bacon may not really be a valuable food.

In addition, it is certain that in the Song Dynasty there was already the "bacon" in our concept today. Chen Yuanliang of the late Song Dynasty and early Yuan Dynasty wrote in "The Guangji of the Ages and Boiling Bacon": "The pork meat of the bad pork in the past year is hung on the stove, and the cold food is taken to eat it, or steamed or boiled, and its taste is very precious." The Southern Song Dynasty poet Yang Wanli also wrote a poem "Wu ChunQing Lang Zhongbai Pork, Drama as an Ancient Sentence", which described the form of bacon: "The frost knife cuts off the yellow water essence, and the moon axe cuts out the red pine ming." Junjia Pig Red Wax's previous work, is when the snow is not at the foot of Wu Mountain. "The form of bacon mentioned here seems to be no different from the bacon we eat now, and more importantly, those bacon are made in the wax moon and snowy days, which is not what we call "bacon" today!

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, bacon was more popular, and in the first time in the novel "The History of Rulin", it was mentioned that when the Yuan Dynasty Caizi Wang Guan was written: "Or meet the Qin family to cook some pickled fish and bacon for him to eat." In the twenty-eighth time, he also wrote that Zhuge Tianshen, a villager, did not know the sausage, but ate the sausage but said, "This is bacon!" It can be seen that in the Ming and Qing dynasties, bacon was indeed a common and people-friendly food.

Nowadays, "bacon" and "pork" seem to have no difference in people's minds. It is also said that the ancients made bacon for storage. Nowadays, people eat bacon more to taste the delicious and flavor of bacon, and at the same time, it is also to taste the strong taste of the Year. Text/Sunjun

【Editor: Chen Haifeng】