Mid-autumn mooncake handbook text content

Mid-Autumn Festival Handbook: The Evolution of Mooncakes

Mooncakes, also known as hu cakes, palace cakes, small cakes, moon balls, reunion cakes, etc., is the ancient Mid-Autumn Festival offerings to worship the moon god, along the line, then formed the custom of Mid-Autumn Festival to eat mooncakes.

Mooncakes have a long history in China. According to historical records, as early as in the Yin, Zhou period, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, there is a commemorative master Wen Zhong's thin side of the heart of the thick "Master Cake", which is China's moon cake "ancestor". Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian's mission to the West, the introduction of sesame, walnut, for the production of moon cakes added accessories, then appeared to walnut as the filling of the round cake, called "Hu cake".

In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, Tianbao, a mid-autumn moonlit night, Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei in the Palace of Daming Penglai Pond, "Emperor Xuanzong on the night of August 15, and the Guifei Taiyi Pond, with the column looking at the moon, not all, the emperor is not happy. So he ordered the left and right: 'on the west bank of the pool don't build a hundred feet high platform, with my consort to look at the moon in the coming year.'" ("Kaiyuan tianbao legacy"). About Penglai pool does not have a best place to look at the moon, the emperor is not happy. It does not matter, the important thing is that a hu man to the ancestors of the ancestors sent round cake has been called "Hu cake", the name is not very good, Emperor Xuanzong's moon watching is boring. Yang Guifei was originally a very talented character, in a pinch, she looked up at the moon, wisdom from the heart, blurted out the name "moon cake".

The Northern Song Royal Mid-Autumn Festival like to eat a kind of "palace cake", folk commonly known as "small cakes", "moon ball". Su Dongpo has a poem: "small cakes such as chewing the moon, there are crispy and Yi."

Zhou Mi, a Song Dynasty writer, first mentioned the name "mooncake" in his account of Lin'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, in the Old Story of Wulin.

During the Ming Dynasty, mooncakes were gradually popularized among the people during the Mid-Autumn Festival. At that time, the ingenious baker, the Chang'e moon myth as a food art pattern printed on the mooncake, so that the mooncake has become more popular with the people of the Mid-Autumn Festival essential food.

During the Qing Dynasty, eating mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival had become a common custom, and the production skills were getting higher and higher. Qing Dynasty Yuan Mei "with the garden food list" introduced: "crispy moon cakes, with pine nuts, walnuts, melon seeds and rock sugar, lard for filling, eat without feeling sweet and fragrant and soft and creamy, very different from the ordinary." Beijing's mooncake is made before the door Zhimei Zhai for the first. Across the country, has formed Beijing, Tianjin, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Chao five flavor series, and around the Mid-Autumn Festival moon worship, moon viewing has also produced many local folklore, such as Jiangnan's "Bu Scholar": cut the mooncake into three large, medium and small, stacked on top of each other, the largest placed underneath the "Scholar". "; medium in the middle, for the "top"; the smallest in the top, for the "flower". And then the whole family rolled the dice, who has the most digital, that is, the first prize, eat big pieces; in turn, the top, the flower, the game for fun.