Famous court dish - red plum pearl incense (folk tale)

When the Yongzheng Emperor was a teenager, he loved to hunt. Once, when he returned from hunting, he suddenly received heavy rain when he crossed the river, the river swelled, the boat was overturned, and people fell into the river. Yin drifted in the river for a day and a night, exhausted and unconscious. When he woke up again, Yin found himself lying on the warm kang, and a girl sat next to the kang. It turned out that on that day, it was the old father of this girl who jumped into the cold river and desperately rescued him. Under the careful care of the father and daughter, Yin gradually recovered as before. But the girl's father was sick because of the cold water that day, and he was sick. Seeing that he would soon die, the old man called Yin to the bed and entrusted his daughter to him. Soon after, Yin, who had not been identified, had to return to Beijing. At this time, the wife was pregnant, and when she was sorry to say goodbye, she tearfully asked Yin to name the child in her belly. Yin instructed, "If a male is born, it is called Hongmei, and if a woman is born, it is called Zhuxiang." ”

Later, the wife actually gave birth to a dragon and phoenix fetus of a man and a woman. So, one is called Hongmei, and the other is called Zhuxiang. Years passed, and there was no news of Yin. His wife Sijun was eager, took a pair of children all the way to find relatives, suffered thousands of hardships, and finally arrived in the capital. But at that time, Yin was already the Yongzheng Emperor of the dynasty, and how could ordinary people know the name Yin? The wife was sad and fell ill in an inn. The owner of the inn had a friend who worked as a royal cook in the palace. One day as a guest, I overheard about this incident and exclaimed, "It's unbelievable, that's the name of the Yongzheng Emperor of today's son!" When everyone heard this, they were surprised, happy and sad. The surprise was that the search for relatives actually found the emperor's head, and the sad thing was that how could ordinary people see this emperor? The imperial chef thought about it and had a good idea. The next day, the emperor ate, and the imperial chef specially made shrimp balls from shrimp, took out the yolk of the pigeon egg, and filled it with a filling made of seafood. After boiling, brewing, steaming and other cooking methods to make a dish, only to see shrimp balls yin red like plums, pigeon eggs white as beads, delicious taste, refreshing and delicious, was named "red plum pearl fragrance". A good "red plum pearl fragrance", so that the Yongzheng Emperor could not bear to stop chopsticks, even asked the meaning of the name of this dish, the imperial chef took the opportunity to kneel and talk about the past. After hearing this, the Yongzheng Emperor burst into tears and immediately took the mother and son into the palace, and this dish became a famous dish of the palace.