A Record for Nourishing Life

How did a Qing dynasty gourmet stock his kitchen? Open his notebook and find out. In 1698, stranded in a remote guesthouse with a clumsy cook, the scholar Gu Zhong borrowed a family recipe manuscript, corrected it, added everything he had learned in ten years of eating at the tables of the great — and called it Yangxiao Lu 養小錄, "A Record for Nourishing Life." It is one of the most practical cookbooks of imperial China: how to purify river water for tea, brew soy sauce and vinegar, pickle cabbage for the winter, make thousand-layer flatbread and flaky pastries, preserve cherries and jujubes, steam crabs, braise a sealed goose — and cook a giant "dragon egg" to make your guests laugh. Its Flower Menu lists more than seventy edible flowers and wild greens, from peony and magnolia to chrysanthemum and wisteria. This complete edition includes: The full original Chinese text of all 267 entries, with a faithful new English translation Modern Kitchen notes for every entry — clearly marked Cook it today, Needs a substitute, or Read, don't cook, with honest food-safety advice More than 50 color illustrations — paintings and food photographs of modern interpretations The author's prefaces, including his famous three kinds of eater: the glutton, the connoisseur, and the nourisher of life Kitchen rhymes for crabs, eggplant, jerky and spice blends, translated as verse For home cooks who love to ferment and preserve, for gardeners curious about edible flowers, for food historians, and for anyone who wants to cook — cleanly and properly — like a Qing dynasty gourmet. The Imperial Kitchen Library brings the forgotten cookbooks of imperial China to English readers, one complete text at a time.