introduction:
My book "Drinking and Eating to See China" began to be written in Haihai, and it is expected to continue to work for one to a year and a half. Do you know that now there are two years of gap, only tens of thousands of words to talk about? One is busy with the innovation of celadon craftsmanship and the establishment of the humanistic celadon genre, and the other is that an epidemic has made the world unbearable, a grain of dust and a mountain, physically and mentally exhausted, so that the writing plan is half shelved. Now is a reboot, but in the new era, we need to cherish ourselves but do not need to cover the treasure, so in the writing process will be selected chapters to be released one after another, for the sake of readers, and please axe correction.
Sesame oil appears in the literature under the name of sesame oil, and it should be in the Western Jin Dynasty at the latest. Western Jin Dynasty Zhang Hua's "Naturalist Chronicles, Volume IV":
（22）
（23）
The standing oil in the arsenal of Emperor Wu of Jin reached 10,000 stones, which proved that the oil was so large that it could not be flax oil as a war material. At the same time, under the same entry, the former article indicates "sesame oil", and the latter article is only oil without saying sesame oil, which proves that the oil of armed equipment is not flax oil. Therefore, it can be inferred that from the Western Jin Dynasty at the latest, sesame oil was mainly used for cooking. In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the vegetable edible oil also had white susten oil. Qi Min Zhi Shu Vol. 3:
（24）
It is the white su, and the ancient book yunzhi oil is the white suzi oil. So far, China has at least three kinds of vegetable oils: sesame oil, hemp oil, and white soy sauce oil. The birth of the stir-fry method seems to have had preliminary conditions, and one of the earliest "stir-fry" characters did appear in the "Qi Min Zhi Shu". Qi Min Zhi Shu Vol. 6:
（25）
Researchers of the history of cooking have mostly used this evidence to prove that the stir-frying method clearly appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and gai because it has a note detailing the method of stir-frying chicken under it:
（26）
Looking at this detail, it is almost the same as today's scrambled eggs. If this note is indeed reliable, the birth date of the speculation method can be finalized, but the time reliability of this note is highly questionable. Synopsis of the Sikuben "Qi Min Zhi Shu":
According to this summary, the annotation of "fried chicken" is probably made by the Song people, and its record should be the method of scrambled eggs in the Song Dynasty. Some researchers also say that the annotations of the "Qi Min Zhi Shu" are still partly written by Jia Sixun himself. But looking at the same entry, the previous page has this:
（27）
In terms of the tone of the note of this sentence, it is true that it should not be Jia Sixun's self-note, and the same is true of the "fried chicken" note under the same article. However, the word "stir-fry" is absolutely true in the text, but what is the method of this speculation, and whether there are already elements of today's speculation. Re-examine the "Qi Min Zhi Shu Volume 9" has a "chicken and duck cake" method:
（28）
This method manifests itself as today's fried poached egg. There are only two people who should pay attention: first, it has been clearly stated that it should be fried in oil, and the "frying" of the Western Han Dynasty recorded in the "Dialects" has been further clarified and developed, that is, the method of "frying" has evolved to be the same as that of later generations; second, the oil used is still a paste rather than vegetable oil, then it can be seen that when it is, at least in the frying method that preceded the frying method, vegetable oil has not yet replaced animal oil.
From this, it can also be seen that once the frying of the Western Han Dynasty evolved, Jia Sixun was clearly recorded in the main text. If the "㷅" of the Western Han Dynasty has also evolved into the "frying" of later generations, it seems that there is no explanation in the main text and it is logical. In short, even if it is really unclear what the real method of "frying chicken" is, it cannot be said to be the "stir-frying" of later generations, and it cannot be assumed that the method of stir-frying appeared during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The only thing that is certain is that the stir-fry method must have appeared and matured in the Song Dynasty at the latest, even if it has not yet become the mainstream of cooking.
Similarly, because the annotations to the Qi Min Zhi Shu are most likely made by the Song people, then the annotations to the preceding quotation of the oil making article should also be understood to reflect the events of the Song Dynasty, and its annotations should be clouded:
（29）
Here is a ranking of the advantages and disadvantages of vegetable oil into the dish, that is: sesame oil is better than white suzi oil, and white suzi oil is better than hemp oil (that is, injection of hemp seed grease paste). In addition, if the method of making dishes in the main text of the "Qi Min Zhi Shu" is only called "sesame oil" and no "sesame oil" and "sesame resin paste", then sesame oil and hemp oil were still commonly referred to as sesame oil during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and it seems that it can also be proved that its annotations were indeed made by the Song people. Until the Song Dynasty, these three vegetable oils were still in charge, and sesame oil became the first choice for cooking oils with its quality. "Dream Creek Pen Talk Volume 24":
（30）
During the Northern Song Dynasty, northern cooks' obsession with sesame oil frying was cute, but it can also be proved that although the stir-frying method was initially mature at that time, the mainstream of cooking methods with oil as the medium was still fried instead of fried. The reason is that the vegetable oil category is not yet rich. As the first choice, sesame oil has a low smoke point and is very unsuitable for most modern stir-fry techniques. Therefore, the popularity of the stir-frying method must wait for a breakthrough in the extraction process of vegetable oil and the great abundance of oil products it brings. This change came in the Ming Dynasty.
"Tiangong Kaiwu And Paste Volume XII" contains:
（31）
The explosive increase in vegetable oil categories in the Ming Dynasty lies in the breakthrough of the production process. Simply put, the method of extracting oil from plant seeds changed from compression to beating, and the oil pressing method was formally established. This oil pressing method still exists in many rural areas under the name of the ancient oil pressing method to this day. Prior to this, the early extraction of oil was mainly pressed, that is, the "harvest pressure to extract oil" in the above-mentioned "Qi Min Zhi Shu Volume III". Then there are the Various Laws, The Twelfth Volume of Heavenly Works and Anointing:
（32）
The method of boiling two woks is derived from the "frying sesame oil" of the Western Jin Dynasty recorded in the "Natural history"; the Korean method of cooking should obviously be the ancient pressing method; and the grinding method is still used today, and the shangpin sesame oil in Yingshi City, Beijing today is still named "small ground sesame oil".
The law of oil extraction developed by the Ming Dynasty was changed to the use of blows, namely:
（33）
The above is the oil pressing method recorded in the "Tiangong Kaiwu", which was first published in 1637 and is not the first to describe the oil pressing method. Thirty years earlier, the Three Talents Were edited in 1607 and published the following year. There is an entry for "oil pressing" under its "Twelve Volumes of Instruments", and the recorded oil pressing method is the same as that of "Tiangong Kaiwu". The two are compared, and it can be proved that oil extraction has been popularized at the latest in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. Under this new vegetable oil preparation process, not only the raw materials that can be used to make oil are greatly increased, but the oil yield is also greatly improved. Tiangong Kaiwu And Paste Volume XII:
（34）
By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, under the newly developed oil pressing method, the category and production of edible vegetable oil have been greatly improved, and the oil medium can be provided for cooking at a stable and relatively low price. Coupled with the long-prepared slope-walled iron pot, the decisive factor for the popularization of the stir-fry method is finally ready, and the Chinese cooking technique has completed the development process from steaming to stir-frying. The fanatic operation of "churning and frying" in the eyes of Westerners has fully dominated the kitchen of Chinese food and reshaped the Chinese philosophy of drinking and eating.
bibliography:
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