Lantern Festival is also called Shangyuan Festival and Lantern Festival. When did the custom of eating Yuanxiao begin?

The custom of eating Yuanxiao began in the Song Dynasty.

In the Song Dynasty, a novel Yuanxiao food was popular among the people: rice porridge or bean porridge poured with meat and poop soup in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. However, this kind of food is mainly used for sacrifice, not holiday food. Until the Song Dynasty, Zheng's "Chef's Record" recorded: "Go on a diet in the middle of the year and get rid of the oil hammer." According to the Record of Sorrow for the Past, which is quoted from Tai Ping Guang Ji and Lu Shi ZaShuo, the method of making oil hammer is similar to that of frying Yuanxiao in later generations. Some people call it "the pearl in oil painting".

In the Tang Dynasty and Lantern Festival, silkworms were eaten. Wang Renyu's "Kaiyuan Tianbao Legacy" records: "The custom of artificial silkworms every year is still left over in the Song Dynasty, but the food in different seasons is richer than that in the Tang Dynasty." Lu Yuanming mentioned in Chronological Miscellanies: "Beijingers use mung bean powder as a branch to make soup, glutinous rice as a pill, and sugar as a mash, which is called Zi Yuan salted soybean. Cooking soup with mixed meat is called salt and black bean soup. Every day, it is like making silkworms, and it is eaten in Yuanjie. " In the Southern Song Dynasty, the so-called "lactose dumplings" appeared, which was the predecessor of glutinous rice balls.