Candied fruit is not only a food accompaniment, but also has a certain medicinal treatment function, which is deeply loved by people. Neijiang honey thread is famous throughout the country, but not just because of the candied fruit.
Sichuan Neijiang sugar industry is prosperous, since ancient times has had the reputation of "sweet city". Neijiang candied fruit, also known as "sweet city candied fruit", is now an important resource for neijiang city's intangible cultural heritage
Neijiang candied fruit is also called "boiled goods" by Neijiang people, because cooking is the most critical link. How is honey thread made? Its raw materials are mainly made from fresh melons, fruits and vegetables. Summarizing the "cooking tips" left by the ancestors of the sugar industry in the past hundred years, it is recorded below:
Dong xing
When candied fruit began is still uncertain, but it should have appeared after the sugarcane was planted in the inner river to produce white sugar. Neijiang's famous candied fruit Quanyuan has already begun to operate candied fruit during the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty. It is said that a group of experts in making candied fruit were housewives in the late Qing Dynasty and early Min. From the combination of these two points, in Neijiang, the mass production of candied fruit may appear earlier, and the "small pot cooking" goods produced by Seiko may appear on the market later.
There is an old custom in Neijiang, after the "inverted teeth" of the Waxing Moon before the Spring Festival (in the old days, the shop owners marked the last "tooth festival" at the end of the year for the clerks or apprentices, similar to today's year-end summary), many families had to make sugar food for the New Year to entertain guests. These sugar foods first had grain flowers, yin rice and other squeezed sugar, and later some large housewives explored the craft of making candied fruit, and competed to show it at the New Year's Spring Wine Tea Party to show that they had "control". As a result, the Small Pot of Preserves of the Neijiang Family has become more and more exquisite, and people with business brains have pushed it to the market, and then gradually become a social commodity.
Neijiang preserves, even after many years of becoming a commodity, are still one of the home sugars made by Uchie Fumuro. During the Guangxu period at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the family preserves of luo and zhu were sweet, fragrant, and moist
Prestigious. At that time, there was a saying that "there is a gong (harmonic Luo) in the city, and a circle of pigs (harmonic Zhu) in the east street."
"Gong on the side of the city" refers to the Luo DaZi in the city of Dongxing County, Neijiang (present-day Dongxing District, Neijiang City). Luo Dazi is the fresh number of Luo Jiaziqiu, who has been engaged in sugar house and leaky shed business for many years, improving the pressure cane strips and improving the pressing efficiency, thus becoming one of the richest people in Neijiang. The honey threads he cooked at home were no less than twenty, and the color and taste were all good. "A circle of pigs on Dongjie Street" refers to the Zhu Zhangfu family in Dongxing Street (also known as Dongxing Town) in Neijiang.
Zhu Zhangfu was once a brother in robes, and he hosted Neijiang County's training for many years, and his family was as solid as ever. Zhu Zhangnan's mother, Zhu Sibo, and Zhu Zhangfu's brother Xie Jishan's mother, Zeng Yulan, were skillful in their hearts when they were young, and they became experts at cooking candied fruit through the words and deeds of their ancestors. The two boiled peaches, citrus bricks, winter, bergamot and other preserves are praised. In particular, the boiled orange red retains a strong fresh orange flavor, and there is no trace of bitterness, the entrance slag, the quality can be called the first in the city.
Before and after the Xinhai Revolution, candied fruit has developed a lot in the Neijiang sugar industry, but it has no significant position.
candied
With the completion of the Chengdu-Chongqing Highway in the 1930s, the traffic conditions in Neijiang have improved a lot and become more convenient. After the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the population of Sichuan increased, and tourists traveling to and from Neijiang, the middle point of the Chengdu-Chongqing Highway, were in an endless stream, which effectively promoted the production and development of Neijiang candied fruit. To this end, Neijiang Candied Fruit has entered a prosperous era.
At this time, there are many candied goods shops and a wide range of products, which has left a deep impression on the travel appearance. At that time, most of the shops that made ice water were boiling preserves, and the candied products were mainly oranges, of which money oranges, birthday bridges, red oranges, etc. were the winning products, so the Neijiang people called such shops "ice orange shops" or "ice shops". Each ice orange shop is made up of two parts, workshop and store, and implements self-production and self-sales.
In the early 1930s, the Neijiang County Iced Orange Guild was established, and most of the members participating in this guild were iced orange owners in the city and Dongxing Street, and the maximum number of member households was 96 every morning, and each member family went to the Tea House on Dongba Street, where the Iced Orange Guild is located, to trade. Xiao Wen, the owner of Quan Yuan's old name, served as the chairman of the guild, and Lin Yuwen (the owner of The Maoshengyuan brand) and Zhang Kexun (the owner of the Yuan Changquan brand) served as the directors
The largest concentration of ice orange shops in Neijiang is Dongxing Street on the other side of the Tuojiang River, during the Liberation War, there were more than 40 shops such as Gui Xinglong, Mao Shengyuan, Tong Zhongxiang, Hengfutai, etc., accounting for about 50% of the total number of ice orange shops. Most of these ice orange shops are distributed in Tianba Street under the jujube field, and the ice orange shops in the city are mostly in Dongba Street, and there are more than 20 shops such as Quanyuan's old name Ai Xiangquan.
The scale of the ice orange shop is generally smaller than the sugar house and the leaky shed, and it belongs to the small and medium-sized capital. The capital of large stores is 4,000 to 5,000 yuan (silver yuan); medium-sized stores are 2,000 to 3,000 yuan; and small stores are more than 1,000 yuan. From the perspective of the output of honey thread, the annual output of large stores is 30,000 or 40,000 jin, the annual output of medium stores is more than 10,000 halls, and small shops also have an annual output of several thousand catties or 100 catties.
Before 1949, the annual output of Neijiang honey line was about one million catties, and the sugar production accounted for 70% of Sichuan Province and 50% of the country, so it won the reputation of "Sweet City" In the business process, due to the amount of working capital, the quality of products, the level of operation and other factors, in short, due to the strength of competitiveness, some ice orange shops have developed, some have maintained their original scale, and some have closed down. This is an inevitable phenomenon in the market economy.
The period when the ice orange shop closed a lot was the period of the Liberation War. At that time, prices soared, people's livelihood was difficult, and shops sometimes closed. Taking Dongxing Street as an example, among the more than 40 ice orange shops, it is common for three or four to close down in a year. In one year, more than a dozen stores closed, accounting for about a quarter of the total number of stores in the street. The reason is that some wealthy merchants hoard a lot of rock sugar to lend to the shortage of money ice orange shops in order to make a profit. Who knows that the sales of rock sugar and candied fruit that year were not good, the price plummeted, and the ice orange shop lost a lot.
Can a loan from a bank solve the crisis? Nor is it, because the interest rate of the bank is quite high. Products made with the purchase price, as long as they cannot be sold for two or three months, the cost will be completely lost.
There was a man named Liao Shunan on Dongxing Street, who made a profit by hoarding white sugar, and then opened his own ice orange shop, but due to poor management and some objective factors, it was only three or four years before it collapsed.
In the form of closure, in addition to closing the door and disappearing, some of them are changed owners and changed their names as usual. For example, at the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the name of the Xie clan in Dongxing Street, "Tongshengxiang", lost the ability to continue to operate because of being framed, Xiao Minggao took the opportunity to buy the deceased and renamed it "Fushengrong", although the river ice bridge industry in the turbulent period was difficult, but the candied fruit business still achieved considerable development. In terms of candied cooking, the variety of flower colors has increased and the quality has improved.
Buddha blesses peace
Every year in the ninth month of the lunar calendar, the sugar house enters the hot sugar industry, and the new white sugar is listed in early October. At this time, the ice orange shop is busy boiling preserves on ice. Ice rise and boiled preserves are always combined, as the ice water left over from ice can be used to cook poor quality preserves. Compared with white sugar boiled goods, ice boiled goods are light black in color, not bright, and slightly inferior in taste.
Iced orange pumpkin and iced orange radish are the two main raw materials for the production of ice water preserves, and the products with which they are used are called "large quantities". In contrast, candied fruit cooked with white sugar is called "fine goods". The price of "fine goods" is twice as expensive as that of "bulk goods".
Dongxing Street is concentrated in dozens of ice orange shops, which all produce "large quantities" in large quantities, and produce "small goods." The ice orange shops in the city generally produce "fine goods", and the ice water they have left is sold to people to mix snacks such as cold cakes. "Fine goods" are mainly sold locally, and there are not many in batches sold outside the country; "Large quantities" are mainly exported, and buyers are mainly from Anyue and Shunqing.
Boiling in ice water or white sugar, it is not easy to be a victorious general in this process. Even a famous stove master cannot be generalized in the success or failure of cooking different products. For example, some palm cookers control the long boiling of shouxing oranges and bergamots, but when cooking oranges and reds, the craftsmanship may be inferior. People often refer to the palm stove master as the palm water master string", which shows that mastering the fire is very important.
After the candied fruit is cooled, it is wrapped in a layer of white sugar on its surface, which is called powder sugar, also called sugar coating, which is the last process of making candied fruit. Wrapped in powdered sugar, it is the finished product. At that time, a kind of "water preserves" that were not coated with sugar and impregnated with honey were also produced. A very important part of "candied fruit" is the packaging problem. For example, the packaging of xiangyuan old number is divided into two periods: pottery canned and canned.