History of Chinese cuisine

He explains basic organizing principles which go back to earliest times and give a continuity to the food tradition, principally that a normal meal is made up of a plant based products consisting of grains, starch (traditional Chinese: 飯; simplified Chinese: 饭; pinyin: fàn) vegetables (菜; cài) and/or fish (鱼; yú) based dishes with very little red meat (红肉; hóngròu) consumption.

The wok may also have been introduced during the Han, but again its initial use was limited (to drying grains) and its present use (to stir-fry, as well as boiling, steaming, roasting, and deep-frying) did not develop until the Ming.

Wilkinson remarks that to "somebody brought up on late twentieth century Chinese cuisine, Ming food would probably still seem familiar, but anything further back, especially pre-Tang would probably be difficult to recognize as 'Chinese'".

The primary and earliest distinction was between the earlier settled and relatively arid North China Plain and the rainier hill country south of the Yangtze River which were incorporated into the Chinese empire much later.

First canals and now railroads and highways have blurred the distinction, but it remains true that rice predominates in southern cuisine and flour products (principally various noodles and dumplings) in the north.

Although no reliable written sources document this era of Chinese history, archaeologists are sometimes able to make deductions about food preparation and storage based on site excavations.

[7][8] Legendary accounts of the introduction of agriculture by Shennong credit him for first cultivating the "Five Grains", although the lists vary and very often include seeds like hemp and sesame[9] principally used for oils and flavoring.

The most common staple crops consumed during the Han dynasty were wheat, barley, rice, foxtail and broomcorn millet, and beans.

[10] Commonly eaten fruits and vegetables included chestnuts, pears, plums, peaches, melons, apricots, red bayberries, jujubes, calabash, bamboo shoots, mustard greens, and taro.

[24] The Han Chinese rebel Wang Su, who received asylum in the Xianbei Northern Wei after fleeing from Southern Qi, at first could not stand eating dairy products like goat's milk and meat like mutton and had to consume tea and fish instead, but after a few years he was able to eat yogurt and lamb, and the Xianbei Emperor asked him which of the foods of China (Zhongguo) he preferred, fish versus mutton and tea versus yogurt.

[30] During the Tang, the many common foodstuffs and cooking ingredients in addition to those already listed were barley, garlic, salt, turnips, soybeans, pears, apricots, peaches, apples, pomegranates, jujubes, rhubarb, hazelnuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, walnuts, yams, taro, etc.

[33] From the trade overseas and over land, the Chinese acquired golden peaches from Samarkand, date palms, pistachios, and figs from Persia, pine seeds and ginseng roots from Korea, and mangoes from Southeast Asia.

Twin revolutions in commerce and agriculture created an enlarged group of leisured and cultivated city dwellers with access to a great range of techniques and materials for whom eating became a self-conscious and rational experience.

Finally, "cuisine" is the product of attitudes which "give first place to the real pleasure of consuming food rather than to its purely ritualistic significance."

[46] In the Song, we find well-documented evidence for restaurants, that is, places where customers chose from menus, as opposed to taverns or hostels, where they had no choice.

[47] There are lists of entrées and food dishes in customer menus for restaurants and taverns, as well as for feasts at banquets, festivals and carnivals, and modest dining, most copiously in the memoir Dongjing Meng Hua Lu (Dreams of Splendor of the Eastern Capital).

[47] Other additional seasonings and ingredients included walnuts, turnips, crushed Chinese cardamon kernels, fagara, olives, ginkgo nuts, citrus zest, and sesame oil.

[47] Song era documents provide the first use of the phrases nanshi, beishi, and chuanfan to refer specifically to southern (南食), northern (北食), and Sichuan (川饭) food, respectively.

[45] The memory and patience of waiters had to be keen; in the larger restaurants, dinner parties with twenty or so dishes became a hassle if the server made even a slight mistake.

[citation needed] An influential work which recorded the cuisine of this period is Shanjia Qinggong (山家清供; 'The Simple Foods of the Mountain Folk') by Lin Hong (林洪).

[68] The dietary and culinary habits also changed greatly during this period, with many ingredients such as soy sauce and Central Asian influenced foods becoming widespread and the creation of important cookbooks such as the Shanjia Qinggong and the Wushi Zhongkuilu (Chinese: 吳氏中饋錄; pinyin: wushi zhoungkuilu) showing the respective esoteric foods and common household cuisine of the time.

[73] China during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) became involved in a new global trade of goods, plants, animals, and food crops known as the Columbian Exchange.

This included sweet potatoes, maize, and peanuts, foods that could be cultivated in lands where traditional Chinese staple crops—wheat, millet, and rice—couldn't grow, hence facilitating a rise in the population of China.

[74][75] In the Song dynasty (960–1279), rice had become the major staple crop of the poor;[76] after sweet potatoes were introduced to China around 1560, it gradually became the traditional food of the lower classes.

After the end of the Qing dynasty, the cook previously employed by the Imperial Kitchens opened-up restaurants which allowed the people to experience many of the formerly inaccessible foods eaten by the Emperor and his court.

However, with the beginning of the Chinese Civil War, many of the cooks and individuals knowledgeable in the cuisines of the period in China left for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States.

Among them were the likes of Irene Kuo who was an ambassador to the culinary heritage of China, teaching the Western world of the more refined aspects of Chinese cuisine.

[80] Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the nation has suffered from a series of major food supply problems under the Chinese Communist Party.

[85] A common saying attempts to summarize the entire cuisine in one sentence, although it now rather outdated (Hunan and Sichuan are now more famous even within China for their spicy food) and numerous variants have sprung up: Another popular traditional phrase, discussing regional strengths, singles out Cantonese cuisine as a favorite: The other references praise Suzhou's silk industry and tailors; Hangzhou's scenery; and Liuzhou's forests, whose fir trees were valued for coffins in traditional Chinese burials before cremation became popular.

Variants usually keep the same focus for Canton and Guilin but sometimes suggest 'playing' in Suzhou instead (it is famed within China both for its traditional gardens and beautiful women) and 'living' (住) in Hangzhou.