<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > preface</h1>
Sweetness is a taste that we can't live without now, why do we say so? Because according to scientific research, sweetness can make people feel happy and happy.
We all know that the most direct source of sweetness is the sugar that can be seen everywhere in our lives, and now our technology is very developed, and the sugar process has become more and more mature, so sugar has gone to every household and has become a condiment that can be seen everywhere in daily life, and with some other additives, it will become a delicious and beautiful snack.
However, in the ancient period when the sugar making process was not developed, it was difficult for people to fill their stomachs, let alone eat sugar all at once, so the ancients could not eat the sweetness that made people feel happy? Isn't life miserable, but rest assured, our ancients still had other ways to eat sweets.
If you're curious about this, follow in my footsteps and see when the ancients started eating sugar and how they didn't.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the origin of sugar</h1>
The emergence of "gluttony" and "gluttony"
According to China's historical records, in the Shang Dynasty there was a term called "dumplings", according to research, this is our later sugar, posterity in order to facilitate memory, the pronunciation of dumplings and sugar as consistent. It can be seen that in the Shang Dynasty of China, there was the emergence of sugar, the history of sugar in China has been as long as thousands of years, it can be said that if you carefully taste the history of China, there will be a sweet smell overflowing.
Later, with the development of the times, there are more and more terms used to describe sugar in China, such as the "rao" that we all know appears in the oracle bones of the Yin Shang period.
At this time, people want to eat sugar, far less than our modern people so easy, but to feel the existence of sugar from the fruit, and because there was no fertilizer at that time, the heavens were not beautiful and other factors, the yield of fruit was not very high, even if there was fruit, the taste may not be appetizing.
However, at this time, people have already begun to pursue sweetness, which is also the beginning of the ancient people in our country in the pursuit of sweetness. Since then, sweetness has become an indispensable taste of every household, the emergence of "dumplings", "dumplings" can be said to be the earliest record of sweet proper nouns in China, although we are no longer often used, but in the description of some delicacies "sweet as food" is still often appeared.
However, this is only the beginning of the development of sweetness, and there is no official emergence of special sugar.
So how does sugar develop? Let's move on.
Sugar continues to develop
With the passage of time and the change of dynasties, history soon changed from the Yin Shang to the Han and Tang Dynasties, and during the Western Han Dynasty in China, people's views on sugar have changed greatly. At that time, some literati proposed that eating sweet food can make people feel more comfortable, which is also one of the manifestations of people starting to consume more sweetness at this time.
And when it comes to the taste that sugar can become enjoyed by every household in China, I have to mention the long history of our wine culture, why do you say so? Because as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty in China, the winemaking skills of the ancients were already very mature, and the steps of making wine were to carefully boil wheat, barley, corn and other grains.
During this period, the grain would be "saccharified" after it was processed, and people thought of a good way to invent sugar, that is, to extract it from the grain, and the extracted sugar was called "millet sugar" at that time. However, according to the practice of the ancients, the resulting sugar is actually crude maltose, but it was not easy to eat this sugar at that time.
And because during the Western Han Dynasty, vendors selling millet candy on the street were already everywhere, and it was no longer a difficult thing to eat sugar. However, the ordinary people must think differently from the nobles and nobles, and the dignitaries at that time also loved to eat sugar, but they did not want to eat the millet candy extracted from the grain like the ordinary people, they wanted to eat a more noble sweetness.
So some high-ranking officials and nobles have spent a lot of money to contract the mountain, and then hired beekeepers to keep bees, using honey produced by bees to replace millet sugar, which is not eaten by ordinary people, after all, wild bees are too difficult to get honey, and they will risk being stung by bees, so ordinary people still enjoy the cheap sweetness extracted from grain.
When it came to the Eastern Han Dynasty, our people inadvertently discovered that although sugarcane is of no use, its internal juice contains a lot of sweetness, so the wise ancient working people of our country took the sugar water taken from sugarcane and boiled it at high temperatures after the earliest batch of sugar cane sugar appeared in China's history. However, the quality of sugar at this time was very poor, and because the production technique was relatively crude, the taste of sucrose was not good, and it was even inferior to the millet sugar at that time.
We must treat history with a dialectical eye, although the sugar at that time only appeared in parts of the south and did not reach the level of popularity in the country, but it also showed that the ancients in our country continued to try in sugar making technology. The next thing to talk about is the progress and development made by the ancients in sugar making in China.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the development of the sugar process</h1>
Caramel in the Eastern Han Dynasty
When it comes to caramel in the Eastern Han Dynasty, everyone may ask, didn't the above mention of "caramel"? The word mentioned above began to describe sugar and sweetness, and now we are going to talk about the craft of making caramel in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which is the first sugar making process recorded in the literature in China.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, a book describing the living conditions of peasants in the "Four People's Moon Order" recorded the process of making caramel in detail:
"Freeze first in October, make cold dumplings, and cook them."
Because in ancient times, people did not have the function of freezing and preserving freshness, so the production of caramel needs to choose the right season first, in order to ensure the storage of caramel, so when making the ancient people chose in winter.
Find a sunny winter day, put the prepared coarse sugar for caramel into a large pot, add the right amount of oil, and after the sugar is boiled, find a few healthy boys to take out the viscous sugar body, at this time the sugar is still very hot, and it is easier to reshape again. Next, the sugar is continuously stirred, stretched, folded and a series of physical processes.
After the sugar liquid cools and hardens to the point of plasticity, and then cut into small pieces with a knife, it becomes the caramel enjoyed by the ancients, this sugar will not melt even in the summer, for that time, this kind of caramel that is not easy to melt is already the world's leading.
The "Nest Silk" of the Northern Wei Dynasty
From the Eastern Han Dynasty onwards, several dynasties were popular for eating caramel, and it was not until the Northern Wei Dynasty that sugar making technology was improved again. At this time, there were already special sugar making places in the sugar making place, and there were quite strict sugar making steps, and the Northern Wei Dynasty Ming Dynasty's Ming Dynasty "Qi Min Zhi Shu" had a record of how to make sugar.
At that time, on the basis of caramel, people began to try to reshape sugar, and the sugar that had just been made was constantly stretched and folded, so that the molded sugar was not only beautiful and very crispy, in addition to the Northern Wei people found that sugar and nut foods can burst out of the aroma of nuts, so they called this fine sugar shredded, plus sesame or peanut sugar as "nest silk".
It is said that the originator of the snack we love to eat later is the nest silk from the Northern Wei Dynasty, the emergence of the nest silk has become a milestone in the history of sugar production in China, and the nest silk has also appeared for the first time on the table of people's happy events, bringing people sweet feelings when people participate in happy events.
Tang Dynasty sucrose technology reform
First of all, when you first see the word sugar, do you feel very kind? Yes, most of the sugar that china now eats also comes from sucrose, but as mentioned above, the early sucrose did not form a general climate.
And because there were not many sugarcane growing areas at that time, it was not until the Tang Dynasty Tang Taizong period that the sugar was brought back to the mouth of the public, but this time the sugar was also reborn compared with the previous one.
During the Tang Dynasty, China was a multicultural country, at that time there were guests from India, brought sugar from their country to Tang Taizong to taste, Tang Taizong was very satisfied after tasting, so he sent people to India to learn how to make sugar.
Because India is a tropical climate country, its sugarcane grows in large quantities, so the Indians will squeeze out the sugarcane juice and put it in the pot to boil, while adding grass and wood ash that is convenient for sugar to form, after the impurities in the sugarcane juice are removed, the preliminary sugar liquid will be taken out and cooled, and then a large piece of rock sugar will be made with special means in India.
The envoys sent by our country to India are also conscientiously learning how to make sugar, but it has not been ideal, and later people wondered whether there was a problem with the sugarcane variety, so Tang Taizong sent people to introduce Sugarcane from India, which allowed Our country to make crystal clear white sugar and crystal white sugar on its own.
In the Qing Dynasty, people found that a green leafy vegetable shaped like rape contained a lot of sugar, so they set this dish as beet, and began to develop beet sugar, but because the yield is not high, it has not been widely promoted.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
Nowadays, most people are smiling at the corners of their mouths when they are sugar, completely unaware that the apples, strawberries, etc. on the table are things that the ancients used to replace sugar.
Although China has been eating sugar since a long time ago, but the quality of the sugar eaten at that time is generally not high, in recent years of research, according to the way recorded in the ancient books to make sugar is either yellow or white, and most of them also contain some crystals, and we usually see white sugar, rock sugar and so on are not comparable.
So when we enjoy the convenience of life now, we must not forget the contributions made by the ancients to us, so that when we eat sugar, we are not only sweet in our mouths, but also sweet in our hearts.
bibliography:
"Qi Min Zhi Shu"
"Four People's Moon Order"