Chinese food

Today, Chinese food is well known around the world, and recipes for Chinese cooking can be found in most cookbooks and on many Web sites. While books with some information about ancient Chinese food have survived the centuries, fascinating new information has come more recently from tombs. In 1999, a tomb belonging to Wu Yang, the marquis1 of Yuanling was discovered at the site of Huxishan. In his tomb there was a book made of 300 bamboo strips, every one of which was found broken. Further study allowed researchers to determine that it was actually a cookbook .It seems that each recipe had a title preceded by a number. In turn, each title began with the phrase “recipe to make....” For example, one began “recipe to make slabs of suckling pig.” Unfortunately, many titles are illegible. Perhaps those who buried the cookbook with the marquis of Yuanling’s remains expected that it would be used by his servants when they prepared food for him in the afterlife. The recipe ingredients could have been those he enjoyed most when he was alive or perhaps they were the sacred, ideal foods for the afterlife. In any case, the Meishifang shows that Han elite enjoyed a varied diet that included vegetables and meats such as pig, chicken, dog, lamb, goose, deer, swallow, beef, and hare.