Literature. Drinking. 【文飲】

Public Domain In my search for thirst-waters , I came across an 18th century reference to the Yuan dynasty planting lemon trees and using them for thirst-waters.  I haven't been able to track down a specific historical provenance for that information, but I did find the poem they additionally cite about lemons (good-for-"meng" fruits).  It's sort of helpful, and I suspect it's an oblique reference to bees making honey. Well, and also to drunkenness.  This is a Chinese poem, after all, and if they're not about at least one of the moon, autumn, or drunkenness, they're probably not worth much. That said, I think most of the lines read independently like " Medieval China Gothic " This poem appears in First Selection of Yuan Poems  compiled in the Siku Quanshu, published 1784, but ascribed to Gu Sili, 1669-1722.  This poem also appears in the Ming dynasty collection The Stone Granary Collection of Poems from the Ages by Cao Xuequan, 1574-16...

I brought one new wine to King and Queens Arts and Sciences : a "boiled" millet wine.  This is the first wine for the second "exceptional" yeast cake recipe in Qimin Yaoshu - the yeast cakes I'm actually using at the moment .  It's got something weird going on.  Let's dive in. YE2W1 造神麴黍米酒方：To make proso millet wine using exceptional yeast cakes 細剉麴，燥曝之。麴一斗，水九斗，米三石。須多作者，率以此加之。其甕大小任人耳。 Finely file the yeast cakes, and air them in the sun to dry.  For one dou of yeast cakes, use nine dou of water, and three dan [30 dou ] of grain.  If you need to make more, keep the ingredients in this proportion.  Use an appropriately sized weng . 桑欲落時作，可得周年停。初下用米一石，次酘五斗，又四斗，又三斗，以漸待米消既酘，無令勢不相及。 When the mulberry trees lose their leaves [Chinese months 9 or 10, mid October - mid December].  First, add one dan of grain, then add five dou , then four dou , and then three dou , adding each after the grain has dispersed [note that this only adds up to 2.2...

Scroll 8 in Qimin Yaoshu has twenty-three  vinegar recipes in it.  I've now translated them all, and rather than posting them fully, I thought I'd offer a summary, and a few of them in particular. I haven't (successfully, ahem) made any of these yet, and when I do I'll post separately about them, with the full recipe included. Science and Civilisation in China  notes that vinegar was a relatively late addition to Chinese cooking, replacing the use of Prunus mume  (a kind of apricot) as a souring agent in the Spring and Autumn period (771-476 BCE). Ingredients Most of these are millet vinegars, produced like a millet wine.  But they also don't all use yeast cakes.  Most are using what I'm translating as "wheat grains" (麥䴷), which are also called "yellow steam" (黃蒸).  To make this: 作黃蒸法：To Make Yellow Steam 〈六、七月中，取生小麥，細磨之。 In the middle of the sixth or seventh months, take fresh wheat, and finely grind it. 以水溲而蒸之，氣餾好熟，便下之，...

I'm working on the vinegar recipes in Qimin Yaoshu , and one of the recipes contains a line that offers some useful insight into the wine making business: 至十月中，如壓酒法，毛袋壓出，則貯之。 When it has become the tenth month, press it with a wool bag as if you were pressing wine, and then store it. Seems like I've been on the right track using cheesecloth and nylon bags, although I would like to get a bag made from mohair or something like that eventually.

I translated another few recipes for the cooks mailing list. I had initially thought that "yellow cocoon candy" would be something like cotton candy, or pişmaniye , but this is actually noodles dry-fried and soaked in syrup.  Still neat!  I wonder how these taste. 《食次》曰：From The Sequence of Food [Lost Northern and Southern Dynasties era text on food, which survives in part here.]: 「白繭糖法：熟炊秫稻米飯，及熱于杵臼淨者舂之為𥻓 ，須令極熟，勿令有米粒。 “To make white cocoon candy [actually a kind of friend glutinous rice noodle rolled in sugar to form pellets]: take fully cooked proso millet or rice [commentary thinks it’s glutinous, but I’m not sure from the text], pound it completely in a mortar as if you are making rice cakes.  You must fully pound it, and not allow any grains to remain. 幹為餅：法，厚二分許。 Form into a cake [cakes?]: in the standard way, two fen or so thick. 日曝小燥，刀𠠫為長條，廣二分；乃斜裁之，大如棗核，兩頭尖。 Dry in the sun until a little dry, and cut it using a knife in straight divisions to fo...