Food culture in Tang and Song Dynasties

Tang and Song Dynasties were the pinnacle of food culture, and they paid too much attention to it. The most representative example of "Suzhou Steamed Voice and Wangchuan Pattern" is barbecue. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, people mainly cooked pasta as their staple food. More specifically, spaghetti is all kinds of cakes. In the note novel Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Tang Dynasty, it was mentioned that "the world is heavy with cakes". In all kinds of history books, novels and poems, steamed cakes, pancakes, Hu cakes and soup cakes often appear, which proves that people's diet in Tang and Song Dynasties was mainly cakes.

So what is the emphasis on meat?

Let's feel from a passage, "the emperor eats too fast, and there are all kinds of cattle, sheep and tapirs." Governors eat cows, Qing eats sheep, doctors eat tapirs, and scholars eat fried fish and vegetables. " During the Tang and Song Dynasties, people thought that only cattle and sheep were the best meat. In the Song Dynasty, this habit was deepened. Up to now, beef and mutton on the market are more expensive than pork, which may be influenced by ancient customs.

Even if beef is eaten, only cows that die naturally or die of illness can be skinned, sold or eaten. No matter whether the cattle are old, weak or sick, it is forbidden to slaughter them. From this, we can also see the democracy in Tang and Song Dynasties, even livestock were not allowed to be slaughtered at will, and to some extent, we can also foresee the reasons for the prosperity of Tang and Song Dynasties.

The diet culture of the Han nationality developed extensively and profoundly in the Song Dynasty. Because of the ban on beef, mutton became the main meat of the royal literati in this period.

Eating sheep in the Song Dynasty was a popular custom of the royal family. In Song Zhenzong, royal chefs slaughter 350 sheep every day. Because of the huge consumption of mutton, pork was introduced, but pork is still considered as low-grade meat. It was later that Su Dongpo created Dongpo's own "Dongpo Meat", which made pork contaminated with some aristocratic flavor.