DEVELOPMENTS

Within a few decades, that simple step from millet soup to bread gave rise to recipes such as the following for honeyed stuffed crab given by Ni Tsan, author of another cookbook for the kings. The crabs were to be cooked in salted water until the color began to change to red, when they were be taken out and broken up so that the meat could be taken from the claws and legs. The meat should then be chopped up and stuffed into the shell. An egg was then to be mixed with a little honey and stirred into the meat within the shell. Fat would now be spread on the egg and the whole then steamed until the egg just started to solidify, taking care not to overcook. For eating, Ni Tsan suggested dipping it into ground orange peel and vinegar.

Another recipe instructed the cook to cut a carp into chunks before cooking it in a mixture of half water and half wine. Meanwhile, a fresh ginger should be peeled and sliced before grinding. This should be mixed with flower pepper before grinding again and then gently stirred into wine until liquid. Pour soy sauce into a pan before adding the fish. It should be brought to the boil three times before the ginger-pepper mix is added and the whole brought to the boil for a final time.

Marco Polo was witness to many of the sumptuous feasts common among the Mongol elite in the later years of the thirteenth century, and he wrote in startling contrast to Carpini a few decades earlier. Carpini traveled through the northern climes, however, which in later years remained more wedded to traditional Mongol values than did the more southern climes where Marco Polo traveled. Even today. West Lake, at the heart of fashionable and cosmopolitan ITangzhou, is famous for the restaurants and food stalls crowding its shores and even spilling onto the boats on the lake itself.