In English, snail? And then what? Snail? It's a word, snail. Only in Chinese can we distinguish land snails from aquatic snails in words to indicate whether they are edible or not.
Yes, snails are regarded as a classic food in French cuisine and are not allowed to eat in Chinese food.
If we compare the taste of snail and snail meat carefully, we will find the difference: as a terrestrial animal, snail meat is thicker, but it needs to be baked with onion, butter, black pepper and red wine to cover up its earthy smell.
Whenever snails appear on the dining table of southerners, it means the arrival of spring, and its seasonal accuracy is comparable to that of duck prophets in Chunjiang.
In fact, snails are indeed extremely sensitive to environmental changes. Slight changes in temperature, land and water quality will change the population, meat quality, color and even sex of snails. In China, where the four seasons are distinct, people have a keen perception of autumn leaving and spring coming, and flowers blooming and falling since ancient times. Whether it is poetry, calligraphy or painting, it is the basis of China's philosophy and China's diet to express the sigh and respect for the natural cycle? When not eating? Background color.
Snails were born in the Spring and Autumn Period, accompanied by rivers and lakes, and naturally became one of the most important foods on the table of China people. Together with saury and crab, outline the lightness of fresh river; Add yellow croaker and clam to describe the freshness and sweetness of seafood. Together with chickens, ducks, pigs and geese, it witnessed the dependence of farming civilization on fields for thousands of years.
However, snails, as aquatic animals, are much more delicate and rich in meat than snails. Whether they are fried, boiled or dried in soup, they are very tasty.
This belongs to the attention of China people.
Snail, which is the same as paddy field, is the most common and easily available snail food in agricultural countries, and it is also an important source of protein for animals in famine years. For a long time, it has always appeared on the table of ordinary people, surpassing expensive meat and eggs. The so-called snail, strictly speaking, is not a snail, but a subspecies of snail. The real snail family has a convex and unsmooth shell surface and is confined to some lakes in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.
But? Snail? It is no accident that the name spread. The earliest remains of human eating snail meat were found in Guilin bamboo skin rock site and Dianchi Lake in Yunnan. About 7000- 10000 years ago, there were a lot of snail shells in Neolithic human settlements.
The most interesting thing is that these snail shells found in the southwest of China are all tapped at the tail. This is obviously not natural deposition. Even today, many places in China still keep this method of eating snails: sucking the snail meat out with the air at the head and tail.
Therefore, the tradition of China people eating snails may have originated in southwest China. They call it a snail? Snail? It is an important evidence that it is confused with snails from southwest China.
2500 years ago, Mandarin and 1, 700 years ago, recorded the same food? Park young? .
The description in Guoyu is relatively simple. There is a famine in Wu, and there is no food in the city. People moved to the water's edge to catch pu ying as food. The history of the Three Kingdoms is more detailed. Describe Yuan Shu's troops fighting in Jianghuai area, and let the army capture Puying alive as rations. This stuff is as big as pears and oranges and as small as peaches and plums. One is to relieve hunger and the other is to feed.
Although some people think? Park young? It may refer to mussels, but if the records of Yuan Shu's separatist territory in the History of the Three Kingdoms are correct, then the Jianghuai forces with Jiangxi and Anhui as their core areas include Dongwu in Sun Shi and Xuzhou in Tao Qian.
On the contrary, during the Three Kingdoms period, the Jianghuai area was already the most important rice-growing area in China, and a large number of social snails associated with paddy fields were undoubtedly the best relief materials and rations during the grain and grass shortage period.
So, what's the relationship between Putonghua and the Three Kingdoms? Park young? It may be the earliest record of people eating snail meat in China. But obviously, in that era when only salt, plum and wine were used as seasonings, snail meat with tight texture, indigestion and high cooking requirements was only a substitute food during the famine period and could not be linked with delicacy.
What really pushed snail meat into the gourmet pedigree was the birth of a condiment: vinegar.
China people have long learned to rely on the fermentation of meat sauce and fish sauce to obtain a sour taste different from fruit acid. However, in the process of protein decomposition of meat, a large number of miscellaneous acids are produced, including amino acids, lactic acid, acetic acid and so on. This can not guarantee the stability of sour taste and acidity, but also affect the promotion. So before the Han Dynasty, the names of sour sauce in Chinese characters were extremely complicated, including acyl, glutinous rice and so on.
But did it appear in the Book of Qi Yao Min in the Southern and Northern Dynasties? Vinegar? Words. This condiment fermented from chaff is actually an inevitable choice without wasting bran raw materials while the chaff technology is mature. Its acetic acid taste is pure, with the burnt smell of rice husk and the sweetness of starch, which is most suitable for the firm taste of snail meat, and can effectively help snail meat decompose and be easier to digest.
Coincidentally, vinegar is a by-product of rice fields, and snails are students of rice fields. In fact, the combination of the two means that the internal circulation of farming culture in China has become more and more mature since the Han Dynasty.