Wushi Zhongkuilu () is a late-13th-century
medieval Chinese culinary
Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of food preparation, cooking, and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as restaurants – are commonly called chefs or ...
work on household
cookery
Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling ...
written by an anonymous author from the
Pujiang region known only as "Madame
Wu".
It is the earliest known culinary work written by or attributed to a Chinese woman and is believed to have been published in during late
Song dynasty
The Song dynasty ( ) was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Fiv ...
or early
Yuan dynasty
The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Div ...
.
Content
The full title of the work is "Song Dynasty Pujiang Woman of the Wu Surname Records on Household Essentials", which echoes the contents of the book as a detailed guide for preparing essential household dietary ingredients and dishes of the period.
This includes cooked items as well as various
pickled and
preserved foods that can be eaten straight or used as ingredients.
Wu's work consists of three chapters grouped according to the types of recipes and originating ingredients:
# "Preserved Meats and Pickled Fish" (): 20 sections
# "Vegetable preparations" (): 38 sections
# "Sweet foods" (): 15 sections
It is also the first published work that described the use of
soy sauce
Soy sauce (sometimes called soya sauce in British English) is a liquid condiment of China, Chinese origin, traditionally made from a fermentation (food), fermented paste of soybeans, roasted cereal, grain, brine, and ''Aspergillus oryzae'' or ''A ...
seasoning in dishes (referred to as "醤油") along with the more typical soy, fish, and meat based seasoning pastes common during medieval China.
Bilingual translation
A bilingual Chinese and English version was published in 2023 as ''Madame Wu's Handbook on Home-Cooking: The Song Dynasty Classic on Domestic Cuisine'', translated by Sean J. S. Chen, with extensive annotations, a glossary, and a foreword by
Eugene N. Anderson and Miranda Brown.
See also
*
Shilin Guangji, another book on cooking written during the Yuan dynasty
References
External links
Textat Chinese Text Project
Chinese cuisine
Chinese cookbooks
13th-century books
{{China-lit-stub
Yuan dynasty literature
Song dynasty literature