The Lost Recipes of the Master Chef

Braised pork, hams, dumplings, pastries and teas from a fourteenth-century Suzhou kitchen. In the decades when the Mongol Yuan dynasty was collapsing and the Ming was rising, a household in or near Suzhou wrote down how it made its wine, cured its hams, steamed its buns, baked its pastries and brewed its teas. The record survives as the Yiya Yiyi 易牙遺意, "Recipes Handed Down from Yi Ya," named for the legendary master chef of antiquity and traditionally attributed to the Suzhou scholar Han Yi 韓奕. This volume presents the whole manual, about 160 entries in eleven sections: wines, vinegars and soy sauce; Thousand-Mile Jerky, ham and wind-dried fish; Great Braised Pork and the art of the spiced master stock; steamed goose, oven-baked chicken, steamed shad and Sichuan-style pig's head; pickled melons, eggplant and garlic plums; flaky pastries, snowflake cakes and meat pies; rice cakes and zongzi; noodles and wontons; sugared tangerines, stuffed lotus root and sesame brittle; fragrant drinks, teas and medicinal sweets. This edition includes: The complete original Chinese text of both books, 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 Color paintings and food photographs of dishes you can make today An introduction to Han Yi and the food culture of the lower Yangzi in the Yuan and Ming For food historians, home cooks, lovers of Chinese culture, and anyone curious about the history of the Chinese table. The Imperial Kitchen Library brings the forgotten cookbooks of imperial China to English readers, one complete text at a time. Read with Book 6 and Book 7, Gao Lian's Ming dynasty recipes, which borrow many dishes from this manual.