Chinese food science and culinary history: a new study.

• Author: Knechtges, David R.
• Position: Book Review

THIS LARGE TOME is a most welcome contribution to the study of Chinese food science and culinary history. The author, Huang Hsing-tsung [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], served as Joseph Needham's secretary in Chongqing in the early 1940s. He subsequently went on to obtain a D.Phil. in chemistry at Oxford, and then worked for food processing and pharmaceutical companies in the United States. He also served as a program director for the National Science Foundation and more recently Deputy Director of the Needham Research Institute. The book was originally conceived in 1954 as a work on fermentation ("the conversion of grains to alcoholic drinks"), and by 1979, two other subjects, food technology and nutrition ("with emphasis on nutritional deficiency diseases"), were added. In 1984, Joseph Needham formally invited Dr. Huang to assume responsibility for the entire volume. The result is an amply documented study of ancient Chinese food resources, culinary methods, literary sources on food and drink, various kinds of fermentation, including alcohol, soybeans, and pickles, food preservation, the production of oils, malt sugar and starch, the processing of wheat flour, tea processing and its effects on health, and food and nutritional diseases in China.

Dr. Huang is uniquely qualified to write this book. He has an impressive knowledge of organic chemistry that he applies to his examination of a large corpus of Chinese textual material. His bibliography of secondary sources, especially the works in Chinese, is quite large and contains many items from Chinese journals that I have not seen. In addition, Huang has had a long-time association with Shi Shenghan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], perhaps the leading authority in the twentieth century in the field of Chinese agriculture and food science.

The book begins with a 115-page introduction to the various types of grains, oilseeds, vegetables, fruits, land animals, aquatic animals, methods of cooking, utensils, seasonings, dining vessels, implements, and furniture that figured prominently in the history of Chinese cooking and eating. Although much of this information is available elsewhere, especially in Chinese, this is the most convenient and authoritative presentation of this information in a Western language. The section on eating implements is especially informative. For example, Huang notes that in the Warring States period chopsticks were used only for eating viands, not grain food, which was eaten with the fingers (p. 104). Only with the wide usage of the rice bowl did the practice of eating grain food with chopsticks gain common acceptance. However, Huang does not tell us exactly when this occurred. He merely specifies the time period as "after the Han" (p. 105), but provides no documentation for this statement.

Huang's treatment of the important food plants and meats is generally reliable and accurate. I only encountered a few places where I disagree with his interpretation. For example, Huang explains the word cai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'vegetable' as consisting of two parts, cao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'grasses' and cai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'to gather', thus "indicating that vegetables were originally collected from the wild" (p. 32). This conclusion does not necessarily follow, for the word cai could refer to the gathering of either domestic or wild plants. For example, in the Shi jing cai is often used to designate the gathering of vegetables in a garden, as in Mao 35/1: "We gather turnips, we gather radishes" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. The Chinese word cai 'vegetable' is directly parallel with the French word legume, which is derived from Latin legere, which means 'to gather'. Presumably in both cases the word refers to the gatherings of either domestic or wild plants.

A plant that may have been erroneously identified is the zhuyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (p. 52, n. 147). It probably is not Zanthoxylum ailanthoides but a type of evodia. (1)

A valuable section of the book concerns the literature and sources that pertain to the study of Chinese culinary science. Huang's coverage of this material is thorough and comprehensive. He provides a detailed inventory of what information about "culinary content" can be obtained from such works as the Shi jing, Chu ci, Li ji, Lushi chunqiu, and the Mawangdui bamboo slip lists of food products. On the Shi jing, Huang refers to Lu Wenyu's earlier study of plants mentioned in this text, but seems to have missed the more recent work by Wu Houyan. (2) Huang also surveys the vast Chinese repertoire of pre-modern works concerned with food and drink, including recipe books and the so-called "food canons" (shi jing [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), works on wine technology, "materia dietetica" (on the medicinal properties of foods). He concludes with a review of the most important modern secondary studies of food culture and technology, many of which are new to me. Most of what Huang says about these work is reliable. However, his translation of some of the book titles could be improved. For example, he translates Qimin yaoshu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] by Jia Sixie [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (6th-c.) as "Essential Arts for the People's Welfare." Qimin is simply a term for "ordinary people" or "common people." (3) Francesa Bray translates it more or less correctly as "Essential Techniques for the Peasantry." (4) There are other questionable translations of book titles. I will cite only one other rather amusing example, the Chengzhai ji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] of Yang Wanli [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] given as "The Devout Vegetarian." Zhai of course means 'studio'. The title should be translated Collected Works from the Studio of Sincerity.

The real "meat" of this book is the long section devoted to fermentation (pp. 149-378). This is where Huang makes good use of his training in organic chemistry. Here we have for the first time in English a lucid and comprehensive account of the origin and evolution of jiu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in China. Although Huang is aware that jiu is "more akin to ale or beer than wine," because the uses of jiu in Chinese gastronomic, ceremonial, and aesthetic contexts are similar to the European uses of wine, he prefers to translate jiu as "wine" (pp. 149-50). There is virtually no topic on wine fermentation that Huang leaves untouched, including the thorny matter of the meaning of the "five qi" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], which he shows were not actually "finished products but rather intermediates in the fermentation process" (p. 164). Other valuable information in this section is the discussion of ferments, especially the processes of preparing ferments (qu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) that are recorded in the Qimin yaoshu. One also learns much about hong qu...