The cold air in recent rounds has made everyone really feel the arrival of winter. Tomorrow will be a big cold, and in the face of cooling, "hands that are cold in the sleeves of clothes" and "feet that are still cold in shoes" are the most uncomfortable moments.
So in the cold winter, the most enjoyable moment is for everyone to sit around the steaming hot pot.
So when did hot pot appear? What did the early hot pot look like?
Don't worry, this issue of ancient time tells you!
When did hot pot appear?
Our country has a long history of eating hot pot, and in the most complete Han Dynasty Marquis Cemetery so far: the tomb of Liu He, the Marquis of Haixia, a bronze vessel resembling a hot pot has been unearthed.
Bronze Wending The tomb of the Marquis of The Western Han Dynasty was excavated
"Bronze Wending" was excavated from the tomb of the Western Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. That is to say, the history of this Western Han Dynasty pot can be traced back at least 2,000 years.
However, if you talk about the origin of hot pot, you may have to start from 10,000 years ago. At that time, the "hot pot" was not a pot, but a "ding" made of pottery. First add water to the ding, then add a variety of meat, and cook a smorgasbord at the bottom of the ding, which was called "soup" at that time. And because of the "grunting" sound of putting food into boiling water, the earliest hot pot is not called hot pot, but "antique soup".
Because the ding, the instrument is large and tall, it is inconvenient to move, it can only be cooked in a fixed place, and each time it is cooked, it is enough to be distributed to the whole village. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, after the invention of copper and iron and various pottery, many small utensils appeared, and hot pot became a common vessel for the people.
Pottery three-legged cooker unearthed from Sanxingdui.
In the Han Dynasty, there were clear documents about hot pot, but at that time, hot pot was called "cone bucket", which was a kind of food that "solo music is not as good as crowd music". The famous historian Ni Fangliu found that there were already various hot pots at that time, and from the perspective of materials, there were not only bronze hot pots, but also iron hot pots and pottery hot pots. From the perspective of the dining situation, in addition to the "small hot pot" in the form of a meal sharing system, people have already eaten a Mandarin duck pot that can put different soups and cook different dishes.
Western Han Dynasty (Collection of Nanjing Museum)
A piece of the Nanjing Museum excavated from the tomb of the Western Han Dynasty in Dayun Mountain in Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province, directly proves that the owner of the tomb, Liu Fei, the king of the Western Han Dynasty, is a full-fledged hot pot "foodie". Moreover, it not only proves that he likes to eat hot pot, but also proves that he eats "Mandarin duck hot pot". Fen ge Ding, that is, to divide Ding into different cooking spaces, to avoid different flavors of the soup skewers, its diet principle is the modern Mandarin duck hot pot.
Liu Fei is very good at eating hot pot, and two sets of "dyeing utensils" have been unearthed next to the fenge ding. The so-called dyeing vessel is a plate that is used as a ingredient when eating hot pot. Judging from the archaeological discoveries of these coming years, the dyeers are either disc-shaped, some are cup-shaped, and if there is a heating device, it is called a "dyeing furnace". From the excavation of the dyeing furnace, the Han Dynasty people ate hot pot slightly different from the modern way of eating, the seasoning was heated, and then dipped in it.
Furnace
At that time, the hot pot was not eaten immediately, but boiled food with boiling water for a long time, and its method was more like the large pot stew in today's northeast. In the Song Dynasty, people began to eat shabu-shabu with hot pot, but it was not beef and mutton, but rabbit meat. When the Song people ate hot pot, everyone sat around the "wind stove" (on which the hot pot was set up). The marinated rabbit meat is boiled in boiling water, and it is eaten immediately after it is clipped. Heavy flavors can also be eaten with spices, which is very flavorful of hot pot today.
In the song Dynasty Lin Hong's diet book "Mountain Family Qing Offering", this hot pot is praised as "the surge of qingjiang snow, the wind turning over the sunset", which means that the soup pot boils like snow, and the rabbit meat is bright red like sunset. The Song people are elegant, and the name given to the shabu rabbit meat hot pot is called "Dial Xia Offering", which is not only full of color and fragrance, but also very literary.
Song Dynasty banquets
However, the prosperity of hot pot is counted to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Qing Dynasty once held several grand "Thousand Sorrows Banquets" (the emperor feasted on the elderly over 60 or 70 years old), and the banquet had the emperor's favorite hot pot. At the feast of a thousand monks in the fifty years of Qianlong, the hot pot became the protagonist of the feast.
According to the document "Qing Dynasty Court Banquet - Thousand Sorrows Banquet", the Thousand Sorrows Banquet was divided into two levels of banquets:
The first-class banquet is set up with two hot pots per table, one lamb slice, one plate of deer tail roasted venison, one short lamb black fork, four bowls of meat dishes, one plate of steamed shouyi, one salt of stove food shouyi, two small dishes of snail box, two ebony tendons, and hot rice with shredded meat. Each table of the second-class banquet is equipped with two hot pots (made of copper), one pork slice, one lamb slice, one lamb plate, one plate of roasted roe deer meat, one plate of steamed shouyi, one plate of stove food shouyi, two small dishes of snail box, two ebony tendons; the same is prepared for shredded meat and hot rice.
The protagonists of the banquets of both levels are hot pots, and Qianlong is simply the most authoritative hot pot spokesperson in history.
Clear tin square one-pin pot. (Collection of the Palace Museum)
If we go back to ancient times, what can we eat?
vegetable
If you like to put potatoes, tomatoes, corn in the hot pot, we need to travel back to the Ming Dynasty. Because according to the "Records of History", "Book of Han" and other records, Zhang Qian of the Western Han Dynasty went to the Western Regions to introduce courgettes, flax, carrots, etc., so there were no potatoes, tomatoes and corn in the Western Han Dynasty.
The ancients also ate cabbage, called pineapple, but in ancient times, they ate cabbage for a long time, and it was not until the Ming and Qing dynasties that they improved the handover of chinese cabbage.
"ChunSongTu" Han Ximeng Ming Dynasty
The vegetables, melons and fruits we eat today, with the character fan, are generally imported products imported to the mainland during the Ming and Qing dynasties, because at that time we used to call foreign countries "fan". If the name of the vegetable has the word Hu in it, it is an imported product that was introduced to the mainland during the Tang Dynasty, when we used to call foreign countries "Hu". Both Fan and Hu have a Sense of China-centeredness, and small vegetable names can also reflect the historical background.
Meat
Was it convenient for the ancients to buy meat? It's still easy to buy in the city. In the cities of the pre-Qin period, there were markets specializing in selling meat, called "slaughterhouses".
Han Dynasty kitchen portrait brick rubbings Collected by Chengdu Museum
Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, had a strict system of fangshi, and the commercial area was mostly limited to the eastern and western cities, and the slaughterhouses were also concentrated here. During the Song Dynasty, cities prospered, commercial districts broke through geographical restrictions, business was available along the streets, and meat shops were common. The Song people pursue a comfortable life, if they are too lazy to go to the butcher's shop to buy meat, they can also wait at home for the butcher to deliver the meat to the door. The Tokyo Dream Record records that the butchers at that time "carried pigs and sheep and cars on the market, and the number of them was hundreds." Ancient butcher shops had cellars where meat was stored and kept fresh at low temperatures.
Wei Jin painted meat cutting figure mural bricks Gansu Museum collection
In the Taiping Guangji, there are 107 references to the Tang Dynasty people eating meat, half of which are eating mutton. The Song people preferred to eat mutton, especially in the upper class. During the Song Dynasty, the imperial kitchen used up to 430,000 catties of mutton and only 4,131 catties of pork per year. Lü Dafang, the minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, also said: "The diet is not expensive and foreign, and the royal kitchen stops using mutton, which is why the ancestral family law is so to the Taiping." It can be seen that eating mutton has risen to the height of the ancestral family law. The Emperor of the Song Dynasty also often rewarded his ministers with mutton, and there was also mutton in the officials' fenglu.
Ancient Butcher Shop Qiu Ying's "Qingming River Map"
Although the Song people loved to eat mutton, the price of mutton was really not low at that time. During the Northern Song Dynasty, mutton was 120 yuan per kilogram, which was one hundred yuan per kilogram today. Gradually, the price advantage of pork began to appear, and the meat eating habits of the ancients also changed, and during the Ming and Qing dynasties, pork became the first meat of the Chinese people.
If you want to eat well, seasoning is indispensable
chili pepper
Historical records record that chili peppers were not introduced to the Central Plains until the Ming Dynasty. However, this can not stop the Chinese people from exploring the strong stimulation of taste. Without chili peppers, the ancients could also concoct a spicy taste that was refreshing to tears. It uses ginger, mustard, peppercorns, shallots, garlic, and pepper that Was introduced from the Western Regions to the Central Plains by Zhang Qian in the Han Dynasty. There is also a zhu zhu, which is rarely used for seasoning now, and its nickname is "Yue pepper", which was one of the main spicy flavors of the ancients before the pepper did not enter China.
In addition, there is also a so-called zero calorie, weight loss essentials - konjac, also known as "konjac ( jǔ )". Ancient konjac was a good raw material for making spicy sauces, but because it was too precious, it had to be obtained by smuggling, so that the konjac sauce method was lost after the Ming Dynasty.
vinegar
The origin of acid can be traced back 6,000 years, when ancient people used natural plum fruit as raw materials, pounded plums into juice and added salt to eat. Originally a valuable condiment that only a few people could enjoy, it gradually became a common spice after the Han Dynasty.
Wei and Jin Dynasty filter vinegar diagram
In the ancient books of the Han Dynasty, there are twenty-three methods of brewing vinegar from barley, wheat, sorghum, soybeans and other ingredients. Using different grains to mold into curves, and using them to make more grains saccharify, wine, and vinegar, is a major invention of mainland ancestors.
Sauce
In fact, the earliest sauces were made of meat, called hǎi. That is, the various meat ingredients are processed and then cut into cubes, mixed with the best rice, koji and salt, added to the high-quality wine for marinating, and then put into the jar and sealed for 100 days. After 100 days, you can get a variety of fish, rabbit, and goose.
Later, a large number of grain production became people's main food, beans replaced meat as the main source of people's protein, and after beans entered the brewing field, there was also the appearance of the word "sauce".
In 1972, in the Mawangdui No. 1 Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province, a large number of food remains that can be identified to this day were found, including various sauce foods. That is to say, during Liu He's Western Han Dynasty, although there were fewer types of vegetables to eat hot pot, it was not a problem at all to eat a delicious hot pot, all kinds of fresh meat, and a variety of strange meat sauces that can no longer be eaten.
Bronze dyeing furnace The Tomb of the Western Han Dynasty was excavated for the preparation of sauces
Having said that, hasn't it aroused your heart to eat hot pot?
Tomorrow is the big cold, quickly meet up with friends to "shabu" together!
Source: China News Network, Xinhua Net, Qingdao Daily, Nanjing Museum WeChat public account.