Towards Xi/Wen
In September 2021, Sichuan Cooking published Mr. Sima Qingyi's "Snowflake Chicken Or Snowflake Chicken Cheese?" After reading the article, I feel that for the study of Sichuan folklore and the collation of food culture, it is a very interesting and meaningful work to do such research. Mr. Sima Qingyi began by combing through the writing and pronunciation of relevant words in the existing Sichuan cuisine literature, speculated on the evolution history of "cheese, noisy, and nao", and finally concluded that the famous dish of Sichuan cuisine should be written as "snowflake chicken cheese" instead of "snowflake chicken". Judging from the method of examination, the treatment of related materials, and the characteristics of this dish, I think this conclusion is still debatable.
It is difficult to say that the evidence is alone
Mr. Sima Qingyi combed and counted 16 kinds of representative Sichuan cuisine literature and found that the word appeared a total of 19 times, of which the word "cheese" was used 1 time, the word "noisy" was used 6 times, and the word "淖" was used 12 times (11 times in the text, 1 time was omitted). Although "cheese" appears only once, it is recorded in the "New Record of The Feast of Abundant Bread according to the Pattern" in the fifth year of Tongzhi, which is the earliest of the 16 documents, and the book is also the earliest known document for recording chicken cheese. Mr. Sima Qingyi drew a preliminary conclusion based on this: "From this analysis, it can be seen that the name of this dish was first chicken cheese, then it was changed to chicken trouble, and later, it was changed to chicken noodles. ”
The author believes that such a preliminary conclusion is debatable. First of all, when making a "fuss", only the snowflake chicken in the "Cooking Technology Textbook" is noisy, and the remaining 4 times are obviously other dishes, such as chicken shark fin soup, chicken noisy sea cucumber, etc., so strictly speaking, the use of the word "noisy" can only be counted as 1 time, that is, the chicken noise in the "Chengdu Overview" is only 2 times in general. But this word is really incomprehensible, so I will put it aside for the time being and discuss this problem later.
Secondly, the use of the word "cheese" is only seen in the literature, as Mr. Sima Qingyi said, "The word 'cheese' is used once." See Tongzhi's fifth year of the "New Record of Fengfeng Fengfeng Tuning", which is the earliest version of the word. In this book, there is no separate listing of snowflake chicken cheese, but in the chicken cheese shark fin dish, the word chicken cheese appears", "In the book "Feast And Abundant Bread According to the New Record" - Mr. Hu Lianquan believes in the commentary that the cheese of the original chicken cheese shark fin should be noisy." I consulted the original book, and in addition to Mr. Hu Lianquan's notes, there is a comment in the text of the entry "Chicken Cheese Shark Fin": "The original name was Chicken Shark Fin." According to the instructions of the annotator, Mr. Hu Lianquan, the "New Record of the Feast of Feng And Tuning Ding" was originally a manuscript, and the end of the chapter was signed "Tongzhi Five Years of Ying Yin Year Season Winter Moon Shuo Five Days, Cheng Record"; the re-copyer signed "November 11, 4th Year of the Republic of China Zhengming". It can be seen from this that the base of the 1987 collated edition of the China Commercial Publishing House is a re-copy of the fourth year of the Republic of China, and the re-copy may be based on the Tongzhi Five-Year Codex (i.e., the original). The five-year manuscript of Tongzhi writes chicken shark fin soup instead of chicken cheese shark fin, and chicken cheese shark fin should be changed by the re-copyer Zheng Ming. Based on this, we can draw two conclusions: one is that there is only one written material for writing chicken cheese, and it is not the dish we are discussing, snowflake chicken cheese (淖), but another dish chicken cheese shark fin; the other is that the writing of chicken cheese is not a first-hand material, but the scribes of the Republic of China's four-year re-codex have changed it, and the original codex of tongzhi five years is written chicken shark fin.
Finally, in the rest of the literature, it is written as Ji Nao, which appears 12 times in the text counted by Mr. Sima Qingyi, and since it appears the most, it can be said that this writing method is more consensual. Of course, these documents were published after 1950, which seems to weaken their value as evidence to some extent. The author has not found other late Qing dynasty or Republic of China literature to verify the writing of this dish, and it cannot but be said that this is a pity.
Nevertheless, the author believes that from the perspective of research, writing snowflake chicken cheese is not sufficient documentary basis. It is difficult to say that there is a problem with this orphan certificate itself, it is obviously not the original first-hand material, but the scribe of the republic of China's four-year re-transcript mingzheng. If we have to emphasize the chronological order of the literature, then the earliest appearance should also be chicken noise, not chicken cheese. Therefore, Mr. Sima Qingyi believes that after the earliest writing of chicken cheese, it seems untenable to speculate on the evolution of cheese, noisy, and so on, in order to further argue that chicken cheese not only appeared the earliest, but also the only correct way to write.
The beneficial contribution of "elegant vulgarization"
"Because of its shape like snow cheese, it was named chicken cheese by the first somewhat cultured eater (most likely a high-ranking official of the Qing Dynasty), "It was originally chicken cheese, but in the process of circulation, the typo of chicken trouble replaced chicken cheese, and then someone found that it was wrong, but he also did not know the correct way to write chicken cheese, so he used chicken to correct chicken trouble, that is, replacing another typo with a typo." And the really correct chicken cheese, in the long river of time, has been forgotten."
The above quotation is the history of the evolution of the name of the dish constructed by Mr. Sima Qingyi, who first guessed that it was correctly written as chicken cheese for the first time, and then used this as a starting point, one mistake for chicken trouble, and then for chicken soup. As mentioned earlier, from the perspective of research, there is a lack of strong and sufficient evidence support.
Nevertheless, Mr. Sima Qingyi's work is still very beneficial, because he uses the phenomenon of "elegant name vulgarization" in folklore to explain why there is such a way as chicken trouble and chicken waterlogging: "Most of the chefs at that time had no culture, and at the age of eleven or twelve, thirteen or fourteen, they worshiped under the master's door, worked for three years, studied art for three years, and served the master for three years, and very few people read books well, so they only listened to the master's 'chicken cheese, chicken cheese' and did not know how to write this word... Just make up your own mind, write it as chicken waterlogging or chicken trouble, it is this sound. ”
The authors of books such as "Chengdu Overview" and "Feasts and Rich Breads According to the New Record of Tuning Ding" are not people in the kitchen industry, and they do not know how to write the gourds according to the way the cooks write, so they spread false rumors. Is there any evidence for this? Mr. Sima Qingyi put forward two pieces of evidence: First, the "New Record of the Feast of Fengfeng Fengfeng According to the Pattern" When recording the chicken cheese shark fin, the republic of China's four-year re-codex added a comment indicating that it was originally chicken shark fin soup, which just shows that the scribes of the four-year codex of the Republic of China realized that the word "noisy" may be a homophonic word, so they directly changed it to the word "cheese", but we have to thank him, he added a comment very professionally. The second piece of evidence is that the lithographed "Chengdu General Survey" is written as "waterlogging", which also reveals that the word is only a phonetic symbol. Therefore, whether it is "waterlogging" or "noisy", it may be the harmonic and vulgar way of writing the name of the dish. Incidentally, the Sichuan dialect does not distinguish between the side and the nasal sound, so cheese, waterlogging, noisy, and 淖 can be regarded as homophones.
Although the history of the evolution of the name of the dish starting from cheese has to be discussed due to insufficient evidence, we have to discuss it, but the conclusion that the words waterlogging and noisy are the harmonic and vulgarization of the name of the dish is considered to be the useful contribution of Mr. Sima Qingyi.
What is the meaning of the words "cheese" and "淖"
The word cheese has three main meanings, one is a semi-coagulated food made of the milk of cattle, sheep and horses, that is, cheese; the second is a paste-like food made of fruit; the third is "li cheese" in the li ji and other scriptures, which is considered to be vinegar in the Wang Li Ancient Chinese Dictionary. If it is thought that this dish should be written as snowflake chicken cheese, then what should be the meaning of the cheese? Obviously, the meaning of vinegar does not have anything to do with this dish. Mr. Sima Qingyi believes that "after the chicken cheese is cooked, the color is as white as cheese, the shape is also like semi-solidified cheese, and it is also like the paste-like food apricot cheese, peanut cheese, etc., so it is named chicken cheese", which shows that Mr. Sima Qingyi took the first and second meanings of the word cheese.
Strictly speaking, I personally believe that the above quotation of Mr. Sima Qingyi's words is specious. Cheese is a paste-like semi-coagulated food, chicken is white and tender cloud-like, the two are obviously different in shape, not so much like cheese, but more like foam cream. The practice of apricot cheese is recorded in the "Qing Barnyard Banknote" as "using the first peeled almonds, beating them in stone mortars, putting them in a cloth bag, flushing them with boiling water, filtering out their residue, adding rock sugar, and making it", from which it can be seen that apricot cheese is also quite different from chicken and cheese, and the so-called "like a lot" is not established.
Privately speculating, the most important reason why Mr. Sima Qingyi advocated writing this dish as snowflake chicken cheese is precisely because he thought that it was similar in shape to cheese, apricot cheese and other foods, and then boldly verified according to this "hypothesis". Personally, I think that in the formative period of Sichuan cuisine, the naming of dishes was more about ingredients, cooking methods and types of dishes, etc. Snowflake Chicken Is unlikely to lean on desserts or drinks for such a hot dish and delicate kung fu dish. On this level, the possibility of writing snowflake chicken cheese is also unlikely.
If you advocate that the correct way of writing is snowflake chicken, it is indeed necessary to respond to Mr. Sima Qingyi's following difficulties: "And the chicken is notified, Baidu Encyclopedia interprets it as 'mud, mud'. Beautiful snowflake chicken cheese, described as a mess of mud... The old man said that the unreliable way of describing 'mud' is completely inferior to this beautiful and elegant dish. ”
The author consulted several ancient Chinese dictionaries, and it is indeed the meaning of mud. But I personally think that the main function of the dish here is not to describe the color and form of this hot dish, but its function is mainly to indicate the characteristics of the dish. Let's first take a look at the ingredients and methods of this dish.
The ingredients and methods of snowflake chicken are similar in various recipes, and I quote below the recipes collected in the 1994 edition of Sichuan Cuisine Cooking Techniques by Sichuan Education Publishing House, which is written by Sichuan Culinary College and has a high degree of authority.
Snowflake chicken
Flavor type: salty and umami
Cooking method: Stir-fry
Features: white as snow, smooth and tender, light and fresh.
Ingredients: Chicken breast 150 g Egg white 100 g Ham 10 g Chemical lard 125 g Salt 4 g
MONOS glutamate 5 g Water bean powder 75 g Fresh soup 400 g Pepper 1 g Cooked chicken fat 5 g
Method:1. Chicken breast meat is selected to be de-ribbed and pounded with the back of a knife into a meat paste, ham is chopped into finely minced, and egg white is mixed into egg bubbles. 2. Stir the chicken puree with 100 grams of cold chicken broth (add it several times), add egg bubbles, salt, monosodium glutamate, pepper and water bean powder and stir well into chicken syrup. 3. Put the pot on the high heat, when the lard is boiled to 70% oil temperature, add about 300 grams of boiling fresh soup to the chicken paste and stir it into the pot, gently push it back and forth with a stir-frying scoop in an orderly manner, until it condenses into a white and tender cloud until it is cooked, drizzle with cooked chicken fat, put it on the plate, sprinkle with minced ham.
The author believes that from the recipe can know that the "snow chicken" word is mainly to indicate that the raw material of this dish is puree meat, into a dish for the paste, while it has the characteristics of easy to digest, these points are the meaning of the word "snowflake", in other words, this dish is called "snowflake chicken puree" today is not wrong. I also found that in ancient poems, it is often used to refer to paste-like foods, such as Lu You's poem: "The pulp is a northern guest, and the porridge is called a decaying one", "The rice is self-nourishing, and I do not dare to recall the southern cooking", "The rice is all listed, and the hike is Huaxuan", and so on. This kind of food is especially suitable for the elderly and the sick, and "Pu Nao" is used for sacrifice to feed the ancestors. It seems that the use of the word "淖" does not insult this classic Sichuan dish.
Or ask: even if this dish can be used with "nao"
To name it, where is its "beautiful and elegant"?
Answer: Care about the word "snowflake"! Aren't snowflakes enough to describe the elegance of this dish?
Mr. Peng Ziyu, a master chef, believes that the exact time when snowflake chicken (cheese) appeared in Sichuan is not known. It was first a northern cuisine, Chengdu from ancient times to the present at least five large-scale migration, especially in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, immigrants from many places surged into Sichuan, casting a unique tolerance of Chengdu people, and Sichuan cuisine is also a very inclusive cuisine, through the "take doctrine", the dishes from all over the country are given Sichuan flavor, and slowly evolved into Sichuan cuisine. As a representative of the northern cuisine, there is a "snowflake" approach in Lu cuisine, such as snowflake fish fillets, this Lu dish also needs to use chopsticks to beat the egg white into snow white foam, the same requirements are shaped like snow, which may hint at the origin of our snowflake chicken dish...
Therefore, although there are still shortcomings in the literature mentioned earlier, but considering comprehensively, snowflakes are shaped and the characters are expressed, and the author believes that this dish is still more secure to write "snowflake chicken".
(Published in Sichuan Cooking, 2021.10, under the title of "Snowflake Chicken Nao, Not Snowflake Chicken Cheese" Editor: Wang Ting)