"Eating" in Song Dynasty: How did people decorate food in Song Dynasty?

How to decorate food? Song people had two methods, one was to arrange flowers and put colorful flags directly on food, and the other was to tie bamboo or iron wire into a certain shape and hang food on it.

For example, during the Double Ninth Festival in the Song Dynasty, people had to feed each other double ninth festival cakes. This double ninth festival cake is a kind of food: rice flour and sugar water are added to make a rice cake, which is steamed in a cage, and then a small flag is inserted on it and sent to the neighbor's house (see Dream of Liang Lu, May and September). Good cake, why do you want to plant the flag? Not for the sake of food, but for the sake of beauty-a cake is like putting pearls on a beautiful woman, and it is helping the food to dress up.

For example, during the Dragon Boat Festival in the Song Dynasty, every household tied wormwood, calamus and sunflower into the shape of small trees or hills, placed them at their doorsteps, and hung dozens of zongzi with red silk thread, just like westerners hung candy on Christmas trees (see "Dragon Boat Festival", Volume III of Old Wulin). A rich man tied a big centipede with gold and silver wire. The centipede had hundreds of feet in the sky, and oranges, zongzi and candied fruit were strung on its feet, which was called "dish rack". Children are fun-loving. It is said that taking the candied fruit off the tray shelf and eating it can ward off evil spirits.

Now, let's go back and look at the dishes that Zhang Jun cooked for Song Gaozong that day: fried white kidney, roasted belly chicken gizzard (roasted lamb belly), roasted quail breast (roasted quail), baked kitchen cake (baked steamed bread) and raw kitchen cake (steamed steamed bread) ... Originally, they were all ordinary foods, but Zhang Jun asked craftsmen to tie them into rockery bonsai, and then hung up these vulgar foods.