As we all know, our traditional cuisine pays attention to a lot, the most basic is the color and flavor are complete, and today, many gourmets are always complaining that the current ingredients are not as fresh as in ancient times, and the dishes made are not as delicious as recorded in the ancient books, as if the ancients ate the same things on the dinner table are particularly fragrant.
Of course, the condiments have played a great role in this, in addition, the ancients are also constantly improving the "taste of life", if we look through the ancient books, it is not difficult to see that there seems to be no taste that they cannot concoct. So do you know the evolutionary history of the ancient people's cognition of "sour, sweet and bitter"?
Image: The ancients concocted stills of taste
First, the history of salty and spicy
1, "the king of taste" - salty
In myths and legends, when the heavens and the earth were still in chaos, the lady in charge of creating man read a sentence of "to have a taste", so the human world has the first taste, which is - salty. Thanks to this allusion, in our folk, this is the "king of all tastes", which belongs to the earliest tongue-tip experience of the ancestors of the Chinese nation.
According to ancient books, China has long invented the method of making salt, generally speaking, the sea water is boiled, after frying the salt, it is divided into five kinds of blue, yellow, white, black and purple according to the quality, which is the "salt sect" of the later culinary circles.
Image: Salt-making stills
By the middle of the 20th century, a lot of ancient containers of fried salt were unearthed in Fujian, China, and after the identification and certification of archaeologists, during the Yangshao culture period from about 5000 to 3000 BC, ancient humans had learned the method of extracting sea salt from seawater, which is the source of the "sunning method" commonly used in later generations.
At that time, people had the convenience of the coast, took local materials, dried the seawater on the sand, and after the water evaporated, the salt was left on the sand, and then collected, watered with seawater, called "thick brine", and finally steamed on the pot, and finally fried into salt.
There is no doubt that salt is the most important taste on the table of people in the past dynasties, and later from the Qin Dynasty, there has been further research and development of condiments, which is represented by sauces such as tempeh brewed from soybeans and other plants, which leads to "salty taste" into a new era.
Image: Stills of fried salt
2, revolutionary taste - spicy
Spicy is the favorite taste of many friends today, but the plant chili pepper entered China, but in the Ming Dynasty, according to the "Zunsheng Eight Lights" record, chili pepper was first called "pepper" when it first entered the Central Plains. So the question is, before the Ming Dynasty, did the ancients not know what spicy taste? Of course not, although chili peppers are imported products, but the ancients also have their own "spicy".
According to the records of ancient books, people will use pepper, cinnamon, ginger, onion, mustard and other plants containing volatile stimulants mixed together to make a spicy spice, which is one of the earliest native seasonings in China, which can meet the enjoyment of diversified taste buds, which is recorded in ancient books such as "Analects" and "Seven Debates".
During the Western Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian was ordered to go to the Western Regions and brought back many strange things, including garlic and coriander, among which pepper is an important spicy condiment native to India, although it is also cultivated in China, but the origin is very limited.
After the Ming and Qing dynasties, chili pepper began to bring great changes to China's traditional eating habits, at the beginning, it was just an ornamental plant, slowly developed into edible vegetables, the ancients have since bid farewell to thousands of years of dependence on peppercorns and onions and ginger, and began to have a fondness for spicy taste.
Image: Stills of spicy condiments
Second, the history of sweetness and sourness
1, different enjoyment - sweet
Unlike many tastes with obvious irritation, sweetness is a taste that can make people feel happy and long, so do you know how much the ancients liked to eat sugar? You've seen the poet Wing Goose, Wing Liu's, but have you ever heard of Wing Tuan? Yes, this is Shi Hao, a famous poet of the Song Dynasty and a famous sweets lover in history.
In his pen, all sweets have a chubby feeling, full of fantasy and satisfaction, "Pink Butterfly Wing Yuanzi", "Full Moon Wing Yuanzi" are its masterpieces, interested friends can go to read it, will definitely make you have a feeling of wanting to eat sugar.
Although in ancient times there was no natural sugar to ingest in the north, but people soon found its alternative - rao, which is a sugar obtained after "saccharification" of starch and malt, the overall appearance of viscous, yes, it also has a familiar name - maltose, which is also the earliest known sweetener in the history of our country.
The Book of Poetry records that in the Zhouyuan region, which is now the Qishan area of Shaanxi, because the land is very fertile, even if bitter lettuce and viola are grown, they will be as sweet and delicious as caramel, which proves that this material has been widely used in China as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty. During the Tang and Song dynasties, with the development of technology, there began to be a large-scale sugar workshop, and rock sugar and white sugar immediately appeared.
Image: Stills from a sugar workshop
2, the aftertaste is endless - acid
Bai Juyi once wrote such a sentence: "Qiong liquid is sweet and sour, and the size of the golden pill is even", which means that when people taste the taste of acid, it will produce a wonderful feeling in the mouth, which cannot be dispersed for a long time, and makes people taste endlessly.
It is said in the Book of Shang that plums are an indispensable ingredient when people want to make a bowl of delicious soup. This also reflects the pursuit of taste in the pre-Qin era.
In addition, it is recorded in the "Yanzi Spring and Autumn" that in addition to being used to cook soups, plums were also used by the people of the pre-Qin Dynasty to cook seafood such as fish and meat, in order to remove the fishy smell. Although plums were a very popular ingredient in the pre-Qin era, we modern people rarely hear of anyone who prepares a basket of plums in the kitchen, and the condiments we add sour taste are all vinegar.
According to archaeological data, as early as the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, there were professional vinegar brewing workshops in China, when people called vinegar, but it was not popularized throughout the country at that time. In the Han Dynasty, vinegar began to be widely produced in the Central Plains, and later entered the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the output and sales of brewed vinegar in China have reached their peak.
Image: Stills of cooking soup with plums
In the famous agricultural book "Qi Min Zhi Shu", the folk vinegar brewing process from the pre-Qin to the Northern Wei Dynasty is summarized, and a total of 22 methods of brewing vinegar are recorded above, and it has to be said that the ancients made enough efforts to sour it.
Article author: Dahui
The entire graphic was produced by the team of the Big Cafe Say History Studio!