Moon cakes, also known as Hu cakes, Palace cakes, Moon dumplings, Harvest cakes, Reunion cakes, etc. It is an offering to worship the moon god in ancient Mid-Autumn Festival. According to legend, in ancient China, the emperor had a system of offering sacrifices to the sun in spring and the moon in autumn. In the folk, every Mid-Autumn Festival in August, there is also a custom about Yue Bai or offering sacrifices to the moon. The famous proverb "The moon is full on August 15th, and the Mid-Autumn moon cake is sweet and fragrant" tells the custom of urban and rural people to eat moon cakes on Mid-Autumn night.
At first, moon cakes were used to worship the moon god. Later, people gradually regarded the Mid-Autumn Festival as a symbol of family reunion, and gradually, moon cakes became a necessary gift for the festival.
Moon cake is the first food in Mid-Autumn Festival, and there are different opinions about its origin. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Liu Bowen, the counselor of Zhu Yuanzhang, the leader of the anti-Yuan uprising in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, took advantage of the crowded Mid-Autumn Festival to give each other round cakes with the words "Kill the Tartars on August 15th".
Dietary customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. Su Dongpo, a great poet in the Song Dynasty, once praised moon cakes with the poem "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, with crisp and filling inside", which shows that moon cakes in the Song Dynasty have been filled with butter and sugar.
In the Yuan Dynasty, it was said that people took advantage of the opportunity of giving mooncakes to carry a note in them, and agreed to take action at the same time to kill and drive away Mongolian "Tatars" on the evening of August 15. In the Ming Dynasty, the custom of eating moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival became more common. Ming Shenbang's "Wan Bu Miscellaneous Notes" contains: "The furniture of ordinary people's homes is a kind of moon cake with different sizes, which is called moon cake."
The "Proceedings" said: "In August, the Haitang and Hosta flowers were enjoyed in the palace. From the first day of the first month, mooncakes were sold. By the fifteenth day, mooncakes and melons were provided by every household. " If there are moon cakes left, they should be stored in a dry and cool place and used separately at the end of the year. This is the so-called reunion cake. After the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, the custom of giving away mooncakes on Mid-Autumn Festival became more and more popular, and mooncakes also had the symbolic meaning of "reunion".
From Qing Dynasty to modern times, new progress has been made in the quality and variety of moon cakes. Different raw materials, production methods and shapes make moon cakes more colorful, forming Beijing flavor, Suzhou flavor, Guangdong style and other unique varieties. Moon cakes are not only unique holiday food, but also exquisite cakes available in all seasons, which are deeply loved by people.
The word "moon cake" was first seen in Liang Lumeng by Wu in the Southern Song Dynasty. At that time, moon cakes were diamond-shaped, coexisting with chrysanthemum cakes, plum cakes and five-kernel cakes, and they were "available at any time, and you can call them if you want." It can be seen that moon cakes at this time are not only eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. As for the origin of the word moon cake, there is no textual research. However, Su Dongpo, a famous scholar in the Northern Song Dynasty, left a poem "Little cakes are like chewing the moon, and there is fullness in the crisp", which may be the origin of the name of moon cakes and the basis of their practice.
Moon cakes originally originated from Zhu Jie food in the Tang Dynasty. During the reign of Tang Gaozu, General Li Jing conquered the Turks through the hidden information of moon cakes, and returned home in triumph on August 15. Since then, eating moon cakes has become an annual custom. Turpan people who were doing business at that time presented Tianyuan Jianyi and a large number of beautiful women with cakes to the emperor of the Tang Dynasty. Gao Zu Li Yuan took the gorgeous cake box, took out the round cake, smiled at the bright moon in the sky and said, "Please invite toad with Hu cake." After that, share the cake with the ministers.
The word "moon cake" has been used in the book Liang Lumeng written by Wu in the Southern Song Dynasty, but the description of enjoying the moon and eating moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival is recorded in the West Lake Travel Agency in the Ming Dynasty: "August 15th is called the Mid-Autumn Festival, and people use moon cakes to get together". In the Qing Dynasty, there were more records about moon cakes, and the production became more and more elaborate.