What was ancient food like?

The diet of modern life is still mainly based on stir-frying, supplemented by steaming and boiling. To fry a delicious dish, you first need a wok. The wok has made a great contribution to the history of food and drink, and the technology of making woks was not yet mature before the Song Dynasty. After the Song Dynasty people made the wok, a new chapter in Chinese food culture was opened. So what did the ancients eat every day before the wok?

Diet of the Ancients

In the ancient times, people's diet transitioned from raw food to cooked food because of the advent of fire. High-end ingredients often require only the simplest form of cooking, a fire plus a serving of ingredients, retaining the most natural flavor of the food, and after a period of barbecue, the fresh flavor fills the surrounding area.

Barbecue is the most primitive way of cooking, to the pre-Qin period, the popular way of eating changed into a soup. Soup is the upgraded version of congee, adding various ingredients and seasonings to the congee to become a soup. The common people usually ate vegetable soup every day, while the middle and upper classes could eat meat soup every day. A soup, the practice is simple, simple ingredients, but carries the simple life of the people of the pre-Qin Dynasty, who worked at sunrise and returned at sunset.

Simple is the popular food culture of the pre-Qin Dynasty, time to the Han Dynasty, an invention that still affects countless foodie friends. The Han Dynasty invented the hot pot, then known as ? Antique spoon? At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the people could only eat some sauces and pickles every day, which was similar to the diet of early Koreans. The emergence of the hot pot completely changed the people's diet in the Han Dynasty, surging hot pot soup and ingredients are perfectly blended with each other, giving people three-dimensional sensory stimulation. Zhang Qian's mission to the West brought back crops such as carrots, parsnips, fava beans, onions and cucumbers, which made the hot pot even richer in ingredients.

Time went further back to the Tang Dynasty, which was the world of noodles. The Tang dynasty invented noodles and baklava, and rice was instantly surpassed. Noodles and baklava from various places began their own path of development and slowly developed their own specialties. A bowl of noodles and a baklava had different flavors in different places, satisfying the tastes of the north and south of the Yangtze River. Sheng Tang was full of inclusiveness, and the diet also embraced different flavors, but in the period of Empress Wu, the only thing that could not be embraced was meat, because Empress Wu believed in Buddhism. This indirectly contributed to the development of noodle dishes, which became an integral part of Chinese food culture.

During the Song Dynasty, the wok finally made its way onto the stage of history, and stir-frying instantly became the people's favorite way of eating. Some of the folk's favorite stir-fry dishes, such as fried chicken, fried rabbit, fried oysters, and fried cashews, were recorded in the Tokyo Dreaming Records. Most of today's many stir-fried dishes originated in the Song Dynasty, thanks to the development of iron smelting technology and the popularization of vegetable oil.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the people were even more blessed, as very many exotic crops were introduced at that time. For example, chili peppers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, bitter gourds, onions, cauliflowers, tomatoes and so on. These foreign crops, became the people of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as modern people on the table essential ingredients. After we understand the way of eating of the ancients, we also need to understand the eating habits of the ancients. Ancient people are also three meals a day, occasionally a snack?

The habits of the ancients

How many meals a day was a matter of status in early history. The Zhou Dynasty had a rather strict system of rituals and laws, and it was then stipulated that only the Son of Heaven could enjoy three meals a day, while everyone else had two meals a day. Ordinary people could only have two meals a day, not only because of the rules of etiquette and law, but also because food was limited at that time. Ancient people ate their first meal around 9 to 11 o'clock, called ? dynasty food? At around 4 p.m., people ate their second meal, known as ? the first meal of the day? or ? breakfast? Mencius. Teng Wengong (滕文公上), it is written, ? The wise man plows and eats with the people, and the breakfast is served at the beginning of the day. This means that they eat two meals a day, starting with the morning meal and ending with the evening meal.

The Historical Records of the Grand Historian records that Liu Bang rewarded his soldiers with three meals, and eventually took down the Guan Pass, so it is clear that three meals a day was the dream of many ordinary people at that time. During the Han Dynasty, the influence of the Zhou Dynasty's rituals on people gradually disappeared, and the system of three meals a day slowly came into the homes of ordinary people. Zhuang Zi's "Easy Travel" recorded, ? When I was in Mangcang, I ate three meals a day and returned, but my stomach was still full of fruit. Meaning that only one day to eat three meals, to ensure that the human body needs a day, which is about the earliest scientific evidence of three meals a day.

The Song Dynasty, most of the people have been three meals a day, which all stems from the Song Dynasty's developed economy, the Song Dynasty is also China's history, the only transition from the agricultural society to the commodity economy society. The prosperity of the Song Dynasty gave birth to the night market, and the earliest nightlife in history began. Various kinds of snacks fulfilled people's expectations of delicious food, such as ham, popcorn, dumplings, dumplings and so on. In the summer season, Song people could also buy cold drinks on the street to relieve the heat, as they had already mastered the method of making cold drinks from snow and ice.

By the time of the Yuan Dynasty, there was a major change in food culture. Before the Yuan Dynasty, the ancients ate their meals separately, meaning that they each ate the food in their own utensils. During the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols, who were the ruling class, had a different food culture, and they practiced a shared meal system. This system is the way we eat today, where everyone eats from a common bowl. This Mongolian custom, along with certain other reasons, led to the complete replacement of the shared meal system.

In the final analysis, what the ancients could eat every day still depended on the state of social development at the time, good social development, the ancients can make the table rich, poor social development, the ancients can not even afford to buy cloth.