Recently, Xuyi County, Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, found a mausoleum of the princes of the Han Dynasty, and the owner of the tomb was Liu Fei, the brother of Emperor Wu of Han. Among the tens of thousands of cultural relics unearthed, one of them is very similar to a modern hot pot, which was named "Wuge Dingding" by experts. This vessel for cooking food, with 4 partitions and a cylinder inside, divides the ding into 5 separate areas, which is the same as the modern Jiugong grid hot pot. This is also the only Piece of Western Han Dynasty Copper Ding unearthed in China so far. Experts said that the excavation of wuge ding ding has pushed the history of hot pot forward by three or four hundred years.
From clay pots to nine square grids, the pot "tastes" the wisdom on the tip of the tongue
Generally speaking, the definition of hot pot contains three contents, one is the way of eating around the stove, the other is the cooking method of boiling soup into the fish, meat and vegetables that is hot and eating, and the third is the name of a special dish. The combination of the three is worthy of the "hot pot" that has been talked about in modern times. Tang Dynasty Bai Juyi's "Ask Liu Nineteen" poem: "Green ants new wine, red clay small stove." Late to the day want snow, can you drink a cup of nothing? It described the scene of eating hot pot at that time.
Image source: CCTV
According to research, during the Warring States period, there was a prototype of hot pot, and the pot at that time was mainly made of clay pots and copper pots, called "buckets". Hot pot, known as antique soup in ancient times, is named after the sound of its food making a "grunting" sound when it is cooked in a pot, it is an original Chinese cuisine with a long history and is a food suitable for all ages. That is to say, from the beginning of the Warring States, the foodie mode was opened.
Image source: Sichuan Museum
In the Western Han Dynasty, there was a "five-grid pot", that is, a pot with several grids, which can cook a variety of different foods at the same time, which can be said to be the ancestor of today's "Mandarin Duck Pot".
In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, "Tongding" became the most common vessel for hot pot, and it is basically the same as our current charcoal stove hot pot. From the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties to the present, there have not been many changes in hot pot utensils.
During the Yuan Dynasty, hot pot spread to Mongolia and was used to cook beef and mutton.
By the time of the Northern Song Dynasty, the taverns in Kaifeng in Beijing had hot pot in winter.
In the Qing Dynasty, hot pot was not only popular in the folk, but also became a famous "court dish", and there was "wild game hot pot" on the Imperial Diet recipe of the Qing Palace, and the ingredients were wild game such as pheasant. The Qianlong Emperor became addicted to eating hot pot, and he traveled to Jiangnan many times, and everywhere he went, he had hot pot. According to legend, he put on a "Thousand Sorrows Feast" in the palace in the first month of the first year of Jiaqing, with more than 1,550 hot pots on the table, and more than 5,000 invited tasters, becoming the largest hot pot feast in history.
Most of the side dishes are imported, and only fungi are the longest
China's hot pot is colorful, a hundred pots and a thousand flavors. The seafood hot pot in Guangdong, the chrysanthemum hot pot in Suzhou and Hangzhou, the Dian flavor hot pot in Yunnan, the dog meat hot pot in Xiangxi, the mao belly hot pot in Chongqing, the lamb shabu pot in Beijing, etc., can be called the "spring breeze on the table" in the cold winter, which is enjoyed by diners. In addition to meat, vegetables are also an indispensable side meal for hot pot meals.
Image source: "Authentic Wind Objects" WeChat public account
Nowadays, cabbage, spinach, potatoes, fungi, etc. are common vegetables for eating hot pot. But according to research, in the land of China more than 2,000 years ago, these vegetables may not have existed.
Sunflower vegetables are no longer practical as vegetables
More than 2,000 years ago, in the "Book of Poetry , Bīn ] Wind and July " , it was said that " In July , it is said that "in July , it is aoi and shū ] " , and aoi is a sunflower , and akin is a soybean. At that time, the most common vegetable was sunflower. Written in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classics in the pre-Qin period, the concept of five dishes is proposed, listing the five most commonly used vegetables, of which sunflower is the first, but there is no cabbage, spinach and so on common today.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China, cabbage officially entered the historical records, when its name was still called "sōng". With its advantages of large yield, storage resistance, good taste and more hardiness, cabbage has gradually replaced the position of the king of sunflower. In the Yuan Dynasty's "Analysis of Jinzhi", cabbage in the northern vegetables has ranked first, and there is no trace of sunflower vegetables. In the Ming Dynasty, sunflower vegetables were completely replaced by cabbage. Li Shizhen said: "In the ancients, Aoi was the master of the five dishes, and now he will not eat it again." ”
The origin of spinach can be traced back to Persia (present-day Iran) in western Asia 2,000 years ago, and through North Africa, from the Moors to Western Europe and Spain and other countries. It is clearly recorded in the Tang Huijiao that spinach seeds were introduced to China from Nepal as a tribute during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang. It can be seen that the time when spinach enters the hot pot ingredients should be after Tang.
Potatoes, also known as potatoes, are, as the name suggests, not a vegetable native to China. Native to the Andes of South America, the potato dates back to southern Peru from 8000 to 5000 BC. Potatoes have only been introduced to China for more than three hundred years, and are said to have been introduced by overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia.
Written in the Book of Lyceum in the Han Dynasty, there is a record of edible mushrooms. "Lü's Spring and Autumn" mentions: "The beauty of taste, the fungus of Yue Luo." Su Gong's "Notes on Tang Bencao" records: "Mulberry, locust, maple, willow, elm, this is the five wood ear ... Boil the porridge, put it on the wood, and cover it with grass, that is, raw mushroom. From this, it is inferred that fungi may be the ingredient that has accompanied the modern hot pot table for the longest time.
From clay containers to delicate copper dings, from single flavors to patterns of nine square grids, from traditional ingredients to imported products from thousands of miles... Over the past 2,000 years, hot pot has witnessed the development of human wisdom and the unremitting pursuit of taste on the tip of the tongue, which together constitute our "gastronomic genes".
(Liu Mingming, Editor of Poster News of Volkswagen Network, Poster News, Time Video, Literature and History Magazine, International Federation of Confucianism, Authentic Customs, Sledgehammer History, Sina Weibo, Sichuan Museum, etc.)