A Soup for the Qan

We have shown in Chapter 1 that the Mongol world order, including qanate China, was supranational in character. Mongols dominated politically, and to some extent socially, but were very few in number and thinly spread. As a consequence they were hardly in a position to force others to become Mongol, or to impose more than superficial conformity with important Mongol customs. Mongol conquerors were exposed to, and welcomed the influence of, other cultures as long as they could continue to perceive themselves as Mongols.¹

At the time the YSCY was written, the Mongol elite had left the steppe behind for more than 100 years. New political and social alliances had been made. There had been new compromises with the sedentary world, including China, so that local Mongolian rule could continue after the collapse of empire in regionally-based successor qanates. In forming these qanates Mongols had collaborated closely with representatives of many other cultures. It may even be argued that, in addition to broader accommodations within a greater world order, the Mongols had only been able to come to power in China through close alliances forged with the various ethnic groups and regional communities of the culturally diverse north.

The northern orientation of the Yüan court was thus political reality. It had its profound influence upon the political history of the dynasty, and upon the Mongols themselves. It also strongly colored Mongol perceptions of China. It was the culture of the north, for example, which came to signify Chinese culture for the conquerors. Since this culture was anything but purely Chinese in the fourteenth century, there is much in the YSCY which seems highly assimilated, in addition to the purely non-Chinese influences present there.

The presence of so many diverse cultural groups in North China, their mutual assimilation to one another, sometimes in interactions extending over a thousand years or more, and the clear impact of the many Chinese and non-Chinese local cultures of North China upon the Mongols and their court culture and cuisine, makes precise definition of the various cultural layers of the YSCY at times difficult. A particular problem is distinguishing Chinese from non-Chinese traditions that are similar due to mutual borrowings and use of the same foods for the same purposes.

Since Sabban’s list concentrates on the assimilated exotic recipes of chüan 1, it fails to take into consideration fermented milks listed elsewhere, many by their Central Asian names, e.g., qatiq. Independent evidence also indicates that most fermented milk products were consumed directly by Mongols and Turks as preferred foods, not as ingredients in other foods, and were available in abundance during feasts.¹³ Even in the YSCY, dairy foods are more evident than they would be in modern China.

Also complicating the problem of determining cultural influences present in the YSCY is the influence there of cultural groups which were numerically insignificant but which, through a close association with the court, exercised an inordinate influence. We have already mentioned the Turkic guards of the qan. Their members must have been the source of northern Turkic vocabulary and foodways that is a minor tradition in the YSCY, but is represented none the less, e.g., in the typically steppe-Turkic sausage and tripe recipes of chüan 1. See particularly recipes #57 and #72, a classic qazi and qarta, two popular varieties of Turkic “sausage,” respectively. Another small but influential group was comprised of Tibetans and associated Kashmiris.¹⁴ They must be the source of the two YSCY recipes which are specifically from the area of north India and south Tibet (#3 and #49).

Mongolian culture finds expression in the YSCY in Mongolian foods, medicines,¹⁵ terminology, and cooking traditions found there, in the ideological orientation and framework of the text, and in its specific mix of traditions. Like the qanate of China itself, the YSCY is neither Chinese, nor Mongolian, nor, for that matter, Middle Eastern. The Chinese base of the Mongol East Asian qanate is implicitly acknowledged. The opening passages of the dietary, for example, in spite non-Chinese content so abundant elsewhere, appeal strongly to Chinese tradition by calling upon the three patron saints of Chinese herbal medicine, the Yellow Emperor, Fu Hsi, and Shen Nung, but elsewhere the YSCY primarily expresses an institutional and cultural compromise between almost all the various groups represented at the Mongol court. Intentional violence is done to the sensitivities of none. Mongolian political institutions were similar: free combinations of Mongolian, Chinese, Turkic, and Middle Eastern ideas. A veneer of standardizing Chinese terminology and apparent Sinicization was carefully maintained to mask an often quite un-Chinese reality.

In this latter connection the Mongol imperial table followed the grand tradition of court foods in Eurasia in setting a huge, splendid, festive board on which everything from swans to venison found their place. It was laden with many kinds of meat, notably including the most spectacular and exotic species available. Fancy drinks were served in golden fountains. There were visually dazzling displays of color and edible sculpture. It also boasted many rare delicacies of magically restorative and potency-inducing efficacy. The qan, like other Emperors, had to impress the world with the manifold ways in which they could obtain, increase, and display their personal powers. In this regard, the medical lore of the YSCY is inseparable from its food lore. Like the taste and color of the food, its medical values made a statement about the great and increasing power of the sovereign. This power was sexual, social, muscular, and financial all at once. It was also cosmological. The medical rules of the YSCY are an inseparable component of the cosmic order. The empire and, above all, its rulers had to function in accordance with this order.

In Mongol traditional thought, as in Chinese, power was ultimately a unity. He who controlled the sources of power controlled its uses and manifestations. Power came from Heaven, from food, from the lineage, and from knowledge. It manifested itself in the engendering of sons, in riding and shooting, in conquering and ruling. To what extent the various kinds of power were regarded as one in actual practice, and to what extent they remained distinct but interdependent, is a question awaiting further research. In the YSCY, this is not an issue. We simply observe how food is manipulated there to increase or restore physical power, and to demonstrate and validate political power.

This brief discussion owes much to Michel Foucault,¹⁶ and to Pierre Bourdieu,¹⁷ but more to field experiences among many East Asian communities, where a feast is a social message and the choice of dishes is carefully contrived to send that message. They are the “words” of that discourse. With Elster¹⁸ we hold that the conspicuous display of power is more deliberate, more complex, and more subtly constructed than Foucault and Bourdieu allow. The qan did not simply invoke food to show that they were better than others. Nor did they hold power simply to dominate and oppress. They wanted food that was not only splendid but also genuinely tasty within their ancient traditions, and genuinely healthy according to the best medical standards of the time.

They were sophisticated enough rulers to realize that they had to build up the state and manage its ideology deliberately. The men who ate Hu’s cuisine were the same men who succeeded in taming the Yellow River for the first and only time in pre-industrial history, who oversaw the revival, and, perhaps, the cynical manipulation of Neoconfucianism as a validating ideology, and who patronized skilled persons of every religious and ethnic background in a display of tolerance far ahead of its time. They were shrewd and dynamic men who created, quite consciously, an imperial order that would do what they wanted. It did not prevent their fall, a mere 38 years after Hu’s book was written. The wonder is that they succeeded so spectacularly for so long.

Still, in more mundane terms, for all the assimilation that the text expresses as part of the Mongol attempt to create a cuisine to please almost anyone and express the power and magnificence of the Mongol court at the same time, there remains a recognizable and substantial substratum of everyday Mongolian culture. The YSCY is replete with specifically Mongolian materia dietica, preferred types of foods, e.g., organ meats, a taste shared with Turks, specific Mongolian recipes, and terminology. There also appears to have been a conscious effort to use traditional Mongolian foods with their medicinal values in mind, judging from the uses to which these foods are put today, and from a few suggestions in the sources indicating that present conceptions of medicinal value of foods may have a high antiquity among the Mongols.¹⁹ A key Mongolian organizational element of the YSCY may be the division of the recipes into three main groups, two of which reflect the two main divisions of food found in the Secret History, i.e., šülen, “soups,” and umdan, “drinks.” The vast majority of recipes have been cooked to suit the “Mongol taste,” whatever the ideological interests of the cooks.

Mongolian Words and Phrases of the YSCY. Perhaps the most conspicuously Mongolian elements in the YSCY are the text’s 23 Mongolian words and phrases. These words, like other foreign terminology in the YSCY must be reconstructed from their Chinese transcriptions. The transcriptions are in most cases inexact, either due to mishearing, mistransmission ²⁰ or even misunderstanding²¹ of the original words themselves, or due to the inability of the phonologically much simplified North Chinese dialects of the era to represent many foreign words, particularly Turkic and Mongolian, with their complex consonantal clusters and many diphthongs.²² In some cases, transcriptions have been simplified to provide transcriptions which, although phonologically inexact, attempt to render meaning as well as sound, for a more popular Chinese consumption. This seems to have been the case with many of the YSCY’s Turkic noodle dishes in particular. Uighur *chöp,²³ for example, a single syllable, is written as two in the YSCY, ch’ou-fen 犓粉. In this case the first syllable, which means “rolled by hand,” is indicative of the elaborate process by which such noodles were made²⁴ in Turkistan and points farther west, while the second syllable not only represents the “p,” which did exist as a final consonant in the early Mandarin of the time, but tells Chinese readers that this is a “noodle,” a fen. Likewise the shui-hua 水滑 of the text not only renders, inexactly, Turkic *salma, another noodle, but also by using the characters “water-polished” to represent the sound tells readers something very important about how salma are made, namely their “polishing” in water. The second syllable, “hua,” is also not so inexact when we consider that it, roughly, attempts not only to represent the “ma” of the last syllable of salma, but also the “1” of the first which in most Turkic dialects would be partially assimilated to the “ma.” The “hua,” with its falling or fourth tone also may render the Turkic accent of the final syllable. Examples could be multiplied. They are found in many other sources besides the YSCY.²⁵ In fact such things are almost universal when one language borrows from another and attempts to fit foreign words not only into existing phonological but also conceptual systems.

*qaralaq qun, “lesser golden-headed swan” or “tundra swan,” Cygnus columbianus³⁰

yeke siraqun qun, “golden-headed swan,” “whooper swan,” Cygnus cygnus

Marco Polo mentions the following Mongolian game animals: wild boars, hinds, roe deer, deer, stags, lions, bears, wild cattle, wild asses, wolves, foxes, hares, and various water-fowl including cranes, and swans. The YSCY lists them too, or their equivalents. It also lists many other wild animal foods as well, including wild fish. Some must be Chinese. Bear claw, for example, is hardly Mongolian, even if Mongols certainly did eat bear meat. Most of the fish, if identified correctly, are south Chinese varieties and hardly traditional Mongolian foods.⁴⁴ The rare Yangtse River porpoise is also unlikely to have been a Mongolian food, nor the Chinese and other species of rhinoceroses mentioned in chüan 3. But most of the YSCY wild animal foods listed below, 5 out of 42 under their proper Mongolian names, must have been hunted and eaten primarily by Mongols, although the Mongols doubtless shared their taste for wild animal foods with Turks and other former nomads resident at court as well. Entries marked in bold are, as far as can be determined, first described or are first assigned medical properties by Hu Szu-hui. Some, e.g., the tarbaqan marmot, are frequently mentioned in later pen-ts’ao; some, those marked with an †, only in the YSCY:

Russian Olive Fruits [Elaeagnus spp including Elaeagnus angustifolia and possibly E. pungens]

Other Mongolian plant foods may be subsumed under Chinese generic names. Mongols gathered many varieties of Allium, pears, and cherries. Trapa fruits, wild hazelnuts, wild vetches, water celery, and even wild Chinese flower pepper are also found in Mongolia.

Thus there is a surprisingly large and recognizable Mongolian substratum of materia dietica et medica in the YSCY indicating a more considerable persistence of Mongolian foodways in the YSCY than might otherwise be expected. The number and range of Mongolian recipes is additional confirmation.

6. Any recipes not already included in the above categories featuring some Mongolian traditional food, especially gathered vegetable foods;

7. Many but certainly not all of the recipes in which cow’s milk, butter, cheese, curds, or any other dairy product plays a role (e.g., #214).

Of these 7 categories, the first, with a total of 27 similar YSCY dishes, 12.3% of all recipes (219), is the most important. It is the single most important recipe category in the YSCY. In these recipes, a variety of ingredients, some processed foods, e.g., noodles, sheep’s liver sauce, cheese etc., others raw, are added to a base mutton/large cardamom broth. The fundamental flavor is in seven cases improved with lesser galangal and once with cinnamon.

Others are semi-solid or at least a thick liquid. Altogether at least 7 of the 27 recipes (#1–4, 6, 8, 22 above) are for dry soups or pilafs, assuming that the rice is boiled for several minutes before it is put into the cooking pot, as is done today in modern Afghan cooking, for example. Seven more (#13, 18–21, 24, 27) are very thick stews, 1 is a spicy bread-stuffing (#7). Twelve are thick but more or less liquid “soups” (#5, 9–12, 14–17, 23, 25–26).

But all these variations in the final texture of the cooked dish are in fact relatively insignificant. What is important is that the flavor base for all 27 recipes (mutton cooked with large cardamom) is the same, that all are boiled and stewed, and that the range of additional ingredients is small. In the 27 recipes vinegar is called for no less than 17 times, onions, leeks, or chives 16 times, ginger in various forms 12 times, sheep organ meats 10 times, usually various organ meats together in the same recipe, black pepper 9 times, coriander leaves 6 times and “sheep’s liver sauce” 5 and probably 6 times. The 27 recipes are clearly a flavor, texture and foodstuff complex, one that is clearly and unmistakably an expression of “des goûts mongols,” and was so perceived by other peoples of Central Asia as late as the Moghul Empire.⁵¹

*süttigen, (No. Tu.: “having a basis in milk”), here “Mongolian tea”⁵⁹

B. Names of Dishes (bread and grain foods discussed in Appendix II by Perry are shown in bold):

*Ishkänä (Tu.) “broth into which bread is crumbled, food taken with bread”⁶⁶

*jis kebabi (Tu from Pr.) “kebabs,” piece of meat roasted on a skewer⁶⁷

Päräk (Tu.) “dumpling filled with fat and meat, e.g. börek”⁷⁰

*Qazi (Tu.) here: “a sheep intestine stuffed with spices” rather than the expected horse stomach⁷¹

*sürmä (Tu. from Ar. sharba[t]?) “liquor,” in the YSCY: “brandy”⁷⁷

Unlike many of the YSCY’s Near Eastern-influenced recipes, there is little about this which is particularly Turkic. The YSCY’s Islamic spices, foods and medicines reflect more a common Islamic (Irano-Arabic) than specifically Turkic cultural context. But in view of the predominance of Turkic cultural elements elsewhere within the Islamic culture of the YSCY, the Turkic forms of some Arabic and Iranian words, there can be no doubt whatever that the above materia dietica et medica none the less largely occurs in the YSCY through Turkic intermediation.⁸⁷

In addition to these direct Turko-Islamic influences, most other YSCY recipes, even including some medicinal ones at the end of chüan 2, are either cooked with Islamic materia dietica et medica or prepared in what is clearly an Islamic rather than a Chinese manner. These include the highly acculturated 27 šülen recipes whose Islamic content has already been noticed above. There may also be considerable influence of Arabic medicine in the YSCY as well, although it has perhaps been mediated through a highly similar Chinese medicine in most cases.

Altogether 27 recipes in the YSCY (12.3%) are either noodle food recipes, or call for noodles. Conspicuously, 23 of these recipes are found among the exotic recipes of chüan 1 (24.2%), meaning that YSCY noodle dishes and noodles are overwhelmingly clustered among those recipes most demonstrably non-Chinese in origin, although not always in detail. Of noodles called for in these 23 recipes, 15 are stuffed noodles, with 9 of the stuffed noodles fried. The following YSCY noodles are of definite or probable West or Central Asian origins. The list includes all those noodles with non-Chinese names, all stuffed noodles, all noodles made more or less exclusively with white flour, as opposed to the bean paste noodles typical of the Chinese practice of the day, the barley noodles, made from what is not a common Chinese flour, the hanging noodles, noodles apparently rack-dried much like early pasta in the West, and the “Euryale Blood Noodles.” The latter probably reflect Mongolian taste even if made with a typically Chinese ingredient. Compare the use of Euryale flour to make *chöp and *suyqa[sh]:

Chüan 2 is the repository for this kind of recipe, with a total of 21, 9.6% of all recipes. The recipes include 10 for various sweet jams and jellies,⁹¹ julab and rubb,⁹² for sauces, one of which may be a badly described khabis (see page 76), fruit extracts, one is called a sharba[t] and syrups made with refined or crude granulated sugar,⁹³ or with crystallized honey. There are also 5 recipes for spiked, here freeze-distilled to concentrate alcohol,⁹⁴ and unspiked berry and fruit punches. One calls for ginseng, but is prepared in a completely Islamic way. One recipe is for a medicinal fruit candy, and 3 are for sweet medicinal cakes. Two call for Turkic qatiq, a dried sour milk, one for ingredients with Mongolian names (tabilqa, cicigina). None the less, all three are prepared in an Islamic way using sugar as a major bonding agent. The YSCY’s medicinal foods, listed later in chüan 2, also include two sugar-based recipes.

One primary source of influences of this type for the Chinese dietary manual may have been works of the popular Arabic tradition represented in the West by the various extant versions of the Tacuinum Sanitatis. In its present form, it is strikingly similar to chüan 3 of the YSCY, although the latter is far more extensive and is largely based upon Chinese, rather than Middle Eastern, experience with herbs and foods. The Tacuinum Sanitatis is believed to be an adaptation of 11th century dietary/hygiene work by Ibn Butlan, the Kitab Taqwim as-sihha, part of a whole tradition of similar Arabic treatises.¹⁰² Such works may have been known to Muslim doctors and dietitians working at the Mongol court in China and thus been used by Hu Szu-hui as sources.¹⁰³

The most noticeable overall Chinese feature of the YSCY is that it was written with a largely Sinicized audience in mind. Its contents, as a consequence, reflect particular interests of this audience, and appeal to Chinese cultural values. The YSCY assumes Chinese attitudes towards foods and medicines, not sharply distinct categories to the Chinese. The YSCY also lists and gives pride of place to an impressive array of more or less purely Chinese materia dietica and medica, particularly those enjoying considerable prestige in the Chinese cultural experience. Thus there is extensive discussion in chüan 3 of rice and millet (1a–2b), and later a section on pork (14b–15a). Rice, millet and pork are also mentioned frequently elsewhere in the YSCY, in “erratic” text blocks that are culturally Chinese and restate Chinese dietary values.

But appearances deceive. Rice, millet and pork, so prominent in chüan 3 listings and in other culturally Chinese “erratic” blocks of text, are rarely called for in recipes. Rice is called for most often, but the recipes involved are nearly all Muslim, e.g., “dry soups” of chüan 1. The rice itself is probably a Middle Eastern variety.¹⁰⁴ Millet is used in only five recipes, one clearly Turko-Mongolian (recipe #45 “Qima Congee”), the others medicinal (recipes #103–104, and 212–213). Pork, the Chinese meat, is called for in only three recipes (recipe #66, “Galangal Sauce Hog’s Head,” and medicinal recipes #165, “Pig Kidney Congee,” and #217, “Wild Pig Meat Broth,” in chüan 2). None is particularly Chinese.¹⁰⁵

Thus, judging from these examples, “Chinese” listings in chüan 3, and Chinese materia dietica emphasized in “erratic” blocks elsewhere in the text, do not mesh well with contents of the recipes. Likewise, chüan 3, the most Chinese segment of the entire text, fails to list many of the most important foreign ingredients (compare Tables B and C in Appendix I) and lists in all only about two-thirds of all YSCY materia dietica et medica. This is another indication of a great disparity between the Chinese side of the YSCY and other cultural traditions represented in it, even an isolation of Chinese from non-Chinese traditions. This fact makes the visible “Chinese” culture of the text at times seem thin and superficial.

But there is one major exception to this pattern which changes the picture completely. Someone, presumably Hu himself, has gone to great trouble to ground the YSCY in the latest medical theories of the time, specifically in the correspondence medicine of the Sung-Chin-Yüan school of Liu Wan-su 劉完素 (1110–1200), Chang Ts’ung-cheng 張從正 (1156–1228), Ch’en Yen 陳言 (fl. 1161–1174), Li Kao 李高 (1180–1251) and Chu Ch’en-heng 朱震亨 (1281–1358), a contemporary of Hu.¹⁰⁶ In its mature form this medicine, by no means the only medical tradition active in China at the time, or even the only Chinese medicine represented in the YSCY, combines the medical world view of the various texts of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon (Huang-ti nei-ching 黃帝內經)¹⁰⁷ with Neoconfucianism. It also sought to apply premises primarily developed with acupuncture in mind in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon to herbal medicine.

Through this grounding, even if thin in places and awkward in others, e.g., “Roast Wolf Soup,” recipe #32 in chüan 1, where Hu Szu-hui freely admits that he has forced a Mongolian food into Chinese categories, the highly heterogeneous materials making up the dietary have gained consistency, and have been assimilated, if superficially, to the Chinese cultural experience. Thereby the foreign has been made acceptable to a broad Chinese audience, and even part of the Chinese tradition. Many animal drugs so popular in later Chinese medicine, for example, are first mentioned and first assigned medical properties in the YSCY. Hu Szu-hui’s clear success in this area is the primary reason for the popularity of the text since the fourteenth century, and the high esteem that it is held in by Chinese dietitians even today. The Chinese medicine of the YSCY thus bears our closest scrutiny as its most important and enduring, if not always most obviously visible, Chinese element. For that reason we begin our discussion with it, followed by a consideration of Chinese culinary influences.

Origins of Correspondence Medicine. As Paul Unschuld has shown persuasively,¹⁰⁸ Chinese medicine is not a single tradition but rather a variety of traditions which have sometimes interacted, and sometimes existed separately, even in isolation from one another, never forming a homogenous and unified whole. Practitioners have also been highly idiosyncratic to the extent that there are almost as many Chinese medicines as there are individual practitioners of it.¹⁰⁹

Also very old in Chinese medicine is the belief that certain individuals are specially empowered to deal with the menaces of the spiritual world, for example the power of generalized forces such as evil wind, or, in later Chinese usage, demons.¹¹¹ In early texts these individuals are generally called wu 巫 (or hsi 覡 when female), a term usually translated “shaman.” Although the shaman performs many other functions including various ritual practices intended to ward off “demons”¹¹² and prevent illness in the first place, the primary focus in shamanic healing is on those illnesses believed caused by the stolen or errant soul of the person who is ill. To discover its location and recover it in a spiritual journey in which the shaman’s own soul is placed in jeopardy, the shaman must go into a trance with the help of a powerful tutelary spirit which is the source of the shaman’s power. If the effort is successful, the patient recovers; if not, the patient dies, perhaps taking the shaman with him.¹¹³

Of more recent origin are two other important traditions of Chinese medicine, herbal medicine and acupuncture. Although their invention is assigned to two of China’s ancient sage kings, neither was systematized until late Chou and Han times. Herbal medicine is the older of the two, since use of herbs in treating illness dates back to Shang times at least,¹¹⁴ but herbal medicine as it is now practiced owes much to the experiments and theorizing of proto-Taoist alchemists of the last centuries BC. They sought to utilize drugs, special foods and herbs to purify the body and free the spirit for immortality.¹¹⁵ The YSCY devotes considerable space to their exploits and details various prescriptions for achieving immortality. In its most ancient form, acupuncture appears to have been associated with efforts to expel demons with moxa-loaded stones and special metal implements, not unrelated to the ritual dagger of the shaman. These were applied directly to the body at special points, not always the same as today’s acupuncture points, to attack the demons, drive them out of the body and thus cure.¹¹⁶ In large part magical, acupuncture also grew out of the knowledge that stimulation of certain points of the body had a beneficial, therapeutic impact. In this regard acupuncture is closely related to moxacautery, another old Chinese healing tradition.¹¹⁷

During Han times new political and philosophical currents and new technology radically altered the character and ideology of traditional Chinese medicine. China was unified under a single dynasty and a new national ideology, a combination of many philosophical streams present in late Chou times, principally those later identified as Confucianist, Legalist, and Taoist.¹¹⁸ Chinese medicine too was reinterpreted, where possible, to conform to the new ideology came to stress imperial authority, a rational political structure, and the domination of reason over superstition. At the same time important new ideas reached China from the West. They probably included the idea of five elements, although the Chinese elements are different than the Indian, Humoral Medicine, and most likely the tradition of classifying foods and medicines as hot or cold. The Chinese also received, or developed, the technology necessary to make fine steel needles, beginning the development which has led to the acupuncture needles of today.

Another basis for mutual permeation was ancient yin-yang cosmology. Equated to human conditions through contrast of female (predominantly yin) to male (predominantly yang), and the alternation of chills and fever, yin-yang proved a basis for early medical speculation. Naturally, it was soon assimilated to the idea of ch’i, and yin ch’i 陰氣 and yang ch’i 陽氣 were born.

The 12 Chinese organs are groups interactively and associated with the five transitional phases as follows:

In addition to their influences upon each other each organ also governs certain parts of the body. The kidneys, for example, govern bone and the ears, which are thus yin and associated with water.

Also part of the physiology in Correspondence Medicine are ch’i and “blood” (hsüeh 血), although there is enormous disagreement in the sources concerning their precise nature. In some recent Correspondence Theory, ch’i has been conceptualized as the body’s primary yang force, and “blood,” not always identical with anatomical blood, as a reservoir of yin. There is no evidence that such a neat distinction was made at the time the YSCY was written. Some sources also distinguish various kinds of ch’i, including ch’i in general, and ching-ch’i 精氣, the body’s “vital air.” There is also considerable disagreement in the sources regarding the vessels (lo-mai 絡脈) through which ch’i and “blood” are supposed to circulate. Other bodily systems recognized by Correspondence Medicine as separate physiological entities are the brain, the five sense organs (nose, eyes, mouth, tongue, and ears), the bodily apertures (ch’iao 竅), including the openings of the above sense organs, also the genitals, the skin, flesh, muscles, tendons, ligaments, hairs, sweat pores, and other foci. They are frequently referred to in the YSCY.

The final diagnosis weighed various signs (hou 候), physical manifestations of disease (hsing 形) and what Paul Unschuld ¹²² calls pathoconditions (cheng 症), which may or may not be identical to the disease being diagnosed. Exactly how they were interpreted and how the diagnosis was expressed varied considerably from school to school. In the YSCY the terminology of disease and thus of diagnosis seems largely traditional. In some theoretical systems elaborate efforts are made to create a terminology specifically adapted to the system in question. Chinese diagnoses are often easily equivalent to Western categories, but just as often are not.

In Correspondence Medicine many kinds of treatment are possible. One, acupuncture, by Hu Szu-hui’s time involved insertion of fine steel needles, almost always in groups, at several recognized points along major and minor vessels to stimulate or retard various organs and systems. Related to it was moxibustion, burning of an artemisia extract on or near the skin largely at the same meridian points used in acupuncture. By Hu’s time herbal¹²³ and dietary medicine had also become possible methods of treatment in Correspondence Medicine, thanks to the integrative efforts of the Chin-Sung-Yüan School.

In this system, well-developed in the YSCY, each medicine or food is assigned to one of five categories:

Herbal and dietary texts such as the YSCY also usually indicate whether or not a medicine or food has a strongly medicinal effect or is even toxic (yu-tu 有毒) and any other negative or positive effects on the body.

The following entries for rice (3, 1a), and the meat of the tarbaqan, Marmota bobak¹²⁷ (3, 19b), are typical of the system. That the latter is a Mongolian rather than a Chinese food makes little difference, except that Hu, the first to describe the medicinal properties of tarbaqan meat, has not assigned it a hot/cold category. Later herbals call the meat neutral and the fat, mentioned by Hu, warming:¹²⁸

When treatingng with diet or medicine, a traditional Chinese doctor was supposed to weigh known properties of foods and herbs and choose those best suited to counteract dysfunction and restore balance in the body. This, at least, is the practice today, and seems to have been so in Hu’s time as well. If the body was overheated, cooling foods would be indicated, and vice versa, with particular cooling foods preferred to particular conditions. Certain flavors were thought to promoting smooth functioning of certain organs. Other flavors had the opposite effect. (Compare pages 25b-26a of chüan 2 of the YSCY.)

The Residue of Demons and Folklore. The YSCY, as a Chinese document, falls squarely within the bounds of the extensive Chinese herbal literature (pen-ts’ao) as described by Unschuld.¹³¹ It has been unquestionably accepted as part of this tradition by later Chinese medical commentators, who have made the YSCY a major source for the early modern expansion of the range of Chinese materia dietica and medica. See, for example, the table of Mongolian materia dietica and medica above. The two entries quoted above, on paddy rice and the tarbaqa[n], also make clear the subordination of YSCY medicine and materia dietica to Correspondence Medicine. This fusion of Correspondence Medicine, herbalism and diet therapy was fairly new at the time, a product of medical theory developments over the previous couple of centuries.

Hu inherited this grand system and accordingly placed his herbal squarely within the theoretical context of the flow of ch’i, the supplementing and strengthening of bodily organs,¹³² and correspondences of flavors and of qualities. He lived with the logical extensions of what had once been a system grounded in empirical observation. By his time, the logic had taken over, and empirical observation was forced into its straitjacket. Chinese herbal literature, including the YSCY, did not fit the mold very well. Even when assimilated to Correspondence Medicine, it continued to develop and to incorporate, often haphazardly and piecemeal, the new knowledge that was constantly accumulating.

Unschuld explains Hu’s theories as “largely based on concepts of magic correspondence.”¹³⁴ While generally true, it is the particular type of magic that concerns us. Moreover, the many purely practical tips indicate that empirical experience was not ignored. We cannot see any logic in the prohibited combinations, and hesitate to explain them by magical correspondence. The few explained in text are explained strictly in terms of diseases they cause, and the same is true today among folk believers in prohibited combinations. A few, like persimmon and crab, have carried through from Hu’s day to our own.

Additionally, comparatively few YSCY recipes represent relatively unvarnished Chinese culinary tradition, in contrast to Ni Tsan’s cookbook, for example, where the majority of recipes are purely Chinese. Most are found among the medicinal foods of chüan 2. A few are also found in chüan 1 but often exhibit West Asian refinements in spicing or cooking technique. One example is the otherwise typically Chinese Recipe #31, “Carp Soup,” employing both black and long pepper. The marination called for is more typical of the Baghdadi cooking of the era than of Chinese. Yet recipes in some ways accommodated or adapted to Chinese culinary traditions are, as Sabban suggests, quite common. Many clearly non-Chinese recipes call for Chinese seasonings. One example is the “sauce” of recipe # 30 in chüan 1, “Bear Soup.” “Sauce” normally means sauce made by fermenting soy beans, or soy beans and wheat, etc. Flower pepper and processed Mandarin orange peel, to give only a few examples, are other frequent Chinese culinary additions to otherwise foreign dishes.

Other common flavorings in the YSCY may also represent Chinese influence. Some 49 out of 95 recipes in chüan 1 and all the more detailed recipes in the chüan 2 call for Chinese bunching onions. Bunching onions often replace Western globe onions in the YSCY’s Near Eastern recipes. This is certainly a Chinese touch but the Mongol taste for onions must be borne in mind as well. Also Chinese touches are the widespread use of tsaoko cardamoms (34 occurrences among the “exotic recipes,” 18 more in chüan 2) and ginger (35 occurrences). Tsaoko cardamom is a signature spice of the YSCY as a whole, flavoring 52 or 23.7% of the recipes, one of the dietary’s most pervasive culinary influences. Ginger is employed widely in the world but the usage in the YSCY is generally Chinese, although the ginger is employed in an unusual pickled form, preserved in distilled liquor,¹³⁶ in nine of the recipes. Among the book’s most thoroughly Chinese touches are its bean paste noodles, although often used in a most un-Chinese way,¹³⁷ glutinous rice powder, Chinese cabbages, Chinese radish, Chinese yams, lotus rhizome, and probably its Chinese chives, although not all are exclusive to China.¹³⁸ Also Chinese are turtle, Yangtse River porpoise, and most of the southern herbs, medicines, and teas in chüan 2. Conspicuously there are no recipes for really non-Chinese game like swans and marmots, although these are discussed in the catalogue section of the YSCY. Deer and bears were familiar to Chinese gourmets, and even wolves were at least known. They did appear in later herbals.

In Appendix I, Table A lists all foods, medicinal, and ingredients called for anywhere in the text of the YSCY. By way of contrast, Tables B and C list ingredients called for in the three major YSCY recipe groups and how often they are mentioned. Table B lists ingredients and how often they are used for the 95 recipes for “exotic delicacies” listed in chüan 1. Table C lists ingredients and how often they are used for the “soups and decoctions” and the medical recipes in chüan 2. Tables B and C show that there are considerable differences in culinary or medicinal usage between the recipes in the various parts of the text. The recipes and ingredients from chüan 2 are far more Chinese than those in chüan 1.

Sabban, who makes a listing of the various spices called for in YSCY recipes¹³⁹ is profoundly impressed by their range and variety and points up the connection of YSCY foods with the “haute cuisine” of the Medieval European courts of the era.¹⁴⁰ Since the Mongol court was probably consciously assimilating itself to the great courts not only of the European world but of the Middle East and points beyond, this is understandable. Much of the spicing is Chinese and this is a major source of Chinese influence throughout the text. Some is not and this may include the undefined spices and spice mixtures called for in several recipes. Judging from two surviving listings found in the CCPYSL,¹⁴¹ the spice mixtures of the time were combinations of West and East.

Usually this type of dish is based on mutton, sometimes on chicken, often on some other animal of alleged special medical value. It is almost always started by boiling the meat or bones with cardamoms. Many recipes involve chickpeas, called “Muslim beans” in the book. That term also applies to broad beans, but they are not implied here. In the YSCY the chickpeas are skinned and mashed into a hummus and added during the initial stage of cooking. Sometimes additional chickpeas are added to the final soup.

Sabban notes that the Chinese diet of today is less soupy.¹⁴⁵ Some comments may be made: first, even the non-medical cuisine of the far northwest, especially perhaps of the Ning-hsia Hui, is still very soupy. Second, the cuisine of Fu-chien province is at least as much so. Fukienese think nothing of serving three or four soup dishes at a banquet, and even the dessert is apt to be a sweet soup. So Chinese traditions may have reinforced Mongolian, and even Middle Eastern, since the Turks and Arabs of the era liked their soups too. Many of the soups of modern European haute cuisine have Middle Eastern prototypes.

In the “soups and decoctions” in chüan 2, most of the Near Eastern or Indian recipes do not have an indicated medical value. The Chinese ones include several that produce saliva and quench thirst, i.e., they are basically just drinks for dehydrated nomads. A large number of them, however, have medical values that accord with those in the classic herbals.

The final YSCY recipe group is more strictly medical. These recipes are arranged by the conditions they treat, beginning with deficiency and ending with bleeding and piles. The largest group treats deficiency, insufficiency, weakness, and lack of strength, often in particular organs. These are treated by a combination of highly nutritious foods with stimulant and carminative spices and drugs, which are very effective for this purpose. Then follow several hydrating and diuretic foods of varying effectiveness; both in the third and first groups we see mallow correctly employed as a gentle diuretic. Some recipes are strictly magical in emphasis, e.g., with references to the supernatural shape-changing fox. Some are hard to evaluate because of the ambiguity of Yüan medical terms. We have, for example, only an imperfect idea of what was really meant by “diabetes” and “apoplexy” in the texts of the era. One suspects strongly that much of this ambiguity would be resolved, to the credit of the Yüan doctors, if we could understand fully their interpretations of illness. A food that is worthless for curing what is now translated as “apoplexy” may have worked perfectly well for the condition specified by chung-feng 中風 in Yüan.

The dangers of over-translating can be shown from Anderson’s field work in South China. There, many foods were eaten for purposes of “cooling” the body. This, in the medical texts, implied curing fever and various “hot” diseases. It turned out that the villagers and fishermen were actually using fresh vegetables to treat low-level deficiencies of vitamins A and C, which, to them, were the focal hot conditions. Needless to say, the treatment worked perfectly. A similar knowledge of the relationship of disease categories and actual behavior is needed for the Yüan. Unfortunately we may be several centuries too late. Further study of surviving documents may provide further clues.

It seems likely, though we have no direct evidence, that the wide variety of ethnic foods had another function too, to please or accommodate guests coming from all parts of the Old World. The cookbook implies, by giving health values for all the major dishes, that the court was itself the major consumer of foods described. But perhaps a visiting ambassador from, say, Northern India would have been served with appropriate dishes from his homeland as a mark of courtesy.

Surprisingly, there are no indications of foods served at particular festivals, nor of any intended sequencing of dishes in a meal. However, medical directions do include many rules about the season, time of day, state of mental or physical health of the individual, and other matters of occasion and context. Thus, YSCY food is connected with time and setting, as in other societies.¹⁴⁷ Food functions not only to maintain health and strength, but also to mark many, if not all, social divisions and situations. Claude Levi-Strauss,¹⁴⁸ Mary Douglas,¹⁴⁹ and others have discussed at length the structuring of foodways in society. We have been unable to analyze all aspects of the structure of Hu’s cuisine, primarily because of lack of evidence about how the cuisine was actually served and consumed. Further research may allow more to be said in this regard. We confine ourselves here to analysis of the form and content of recipes.

Otherwise YSCY cuisine is very close to the perhaps assimilated cuisine of Ning-hsia, Kan-su 甘肅 and Shan-hsi 陝西 today. The high use of mutton, great focus on soups, especially noodle soups, a well-developed dumpling technology, the importance of Chinese onions, simple spicing, love of a variety of animal foods, lack of much use of rice and fish, and relative downplaying of soybean foods all link these provinces with the YSCY rather than with the modern food of east and south China. The vinegar that is called for in 39 YSCY recipes is probably another touch linking the cuisine of the YSCY with China’s Northwest. The vinegar used in modern “Hui” cooking is often a wine vinegar instead of the traditional Chinese rice, or rice-wheat vinegar. The YSCY’s vinegar is probably also wine- rather than rice-based. Differences between YSCY and modern Northwest cuisine include a fondness in that area for stir-frying, and rather more use of garlic, pork, and soy products, but Ninghsia Muslim cooking in particular is still very close to the YSCY. It lacks, of course, pork. There is also little demonstrable Western influence in the Northwest today, no mastic, asafoetida or sharbat. Disruption of Central Asian trade routes since the Yüan is no doubt the primary reason.

A stronger influence is North India. A couple of recipes in chüan 1 are explicitly identified as being from there. One of them (“Seu soup,” #49) seems hard to pin down to any specific area, in spite of its Tibetan name and Tibetan mediation. The other (“Bal-po soup”) is called Nepalese (#3). It is not much like today’s Nepalese food, which shows recent Indian and Tibetan influences, but it is very much like the food of Kashmir. A modern Kashmiri dish called qalia, based on mutton, Chinese radish, thickener, and an analogous spice mix, is strikingly similar. It is even topped with fresh coriander leaves. Two key differences between the YSCY’s “Bal-po Soup” and qalia tell us much about the YSCY. In qalia, the meat is first fried and the thickener is yogurt. Another Kashmiri touch is the use of both ground dried ginger and fresh ginger in several YSCY recipes, often along with asafoetida. This exact spice mix is very common in Kashmir and, to our knowledge, nowhere else.¹⁵⁴ Evidently, it was more widespread in 1330, but still a northwest Indian influence is obvious and unmistakable in the YSCY and was perhaps transmitted through many Tibetan monks at court, among others. Such spices as ground ginger, long pepper, turmeric, and pomegranate are associated with India in the YSCY and seem to measure the influence.

Last, some recipes seem like nothing on earth today. This is especially true of the long, complicated and detailed recipe for “Qurim bonnets” (#90). It would seem the creation of some genius in the kitchen of the Yüan court, possibly Hu himself. It mixes Chinese and west Asian ingredients with gay abandon, but is based on a thoroughly Mongolian mix of sheep parts. It is, like the YSCY itself, a reflection of a long lost era of unique cultural interaction and of fusion, by Mongol rulers with pretensions of universality.

¹The following incident from the travelogue of William of Rubruck makes very clear just how important identity was for Medieval Mongols (see Wyngaert, 1929: 205):

Thus as a consequence going towards Baatu due east, we arrived at the Ethilia [Volga] on the third day and when I saw the waters of that river I wondered from where in the north so much water descended. Before leaving Sartach, the above mentioned Coiac said to us, along with many other secretaries of the court: “Do not say that our lord is a Christian, for he is not a Christian but a Moal.” For this is because the name Christian seems to them to be the name of some people, and they have such a pride that although perhaps believing something of Christ, they are nonetheless unwilling to be called Christians, desiring their own name, that is, Moal, to be exalted above all other names.

²Françoise Sabban evaluates the YSCY as follows: “Média au service des détenteurs du pouvoir, ces Mongols á peine sinisés, encore imprégnés des odeurs de la steppe, le traité de Hu Sihui apparait comme une traduction dans le langage de la cuisine chinoise des appétits et des goûts mongols.” See page 42 of her excellent study “Cuisine à la cour de l’empereur de Chine: les aspects culinaires du Yinshan Zhengyao de Hu Sihui,” Medievales 5 (November, 1983): 32–56. Our evaluation of the text agrees with hers with the significant difference that we also see a Turkicization as well as a Sinicization of YSCY recipes, and a translation into the conventions of Islamic as well as Chinese cuisine. Sabban’s French-language article has now also appeared in an English version as “Court Cuisine in Fourteenth-Century Imperial China: Some Culinary Aspects of Hu Sihui’s Yinshan Zhengyao,” Food and Foodways I (1986): 161–96. (Henceforth Sabban, 1986b.)

³In the Yüan political/judicial hierarchy of the fourteenth century Mongols and their West Asian allies (se-mu jen 色目人) ranked first, followed by north Chinese (including assimilated members of non-Chinese groups such as Khitan and Jürched) and southerners, with the former enjoying far more rights. The classic study of this hierarchy remains Meng Szu-ming, Yüan-tai she-hui chieh-chi chih-tu (Hong Kong, 1967).

⁴It is extremely difficult to estimate the ratio of Chinese to non-Chinese in north China during the fourteenth century. Available Yüan dynasty statistics are incomplete and fail to provide an ethnic breakdown. Vorob’yev (1975: 295), using better Chin dynasty figures, has estimated that 87% of the population of Chin domains was “Chinese” at the beginning of the twelfth century, 10% Jürched, 1% Po-hai, 2% Khitan. He gives no figures for other non-Chinese groups inhabiting Chin domains, known to have been together perhaps as numerous as the Khitan. They included Turkic-speakers, other “Hui,” Tanguts living outside of Hsi-hsia, and other small but still distinct cultural groups. All have apparently been lumped by him with the “Chinese” whose numbers must be adjusted accordingly. Any estimate of the ethnic breakdown for North China as a whole must also take into account the population of Hsi-hsia, a large percentage of which was Tangut, in addition to smaller numbers of other non-Chinese groups including Turkic-speakers and other “Hui.” At best the Chinese were a bare majority in this small but relatively populous state, judging from the archaeological remains of the period. Thus substantially less than 87% of North China’s total population was Chinese circa 1200, probably less than 85%, the actual figure depending upon how large the total population of Hsi-hsia was at the time. In 1330 the total population of the north was almost certainly smaller than it was in 1200, among other things due to the damage inflicted by the Mongol conquest itself. The percentage of non-Chinese was also higher, both due to the entry of new groups, including the Mongols, and the Turks and others they brought along with them, and differential proportions of demographic loss for Chinese versus non-Chinese groups. The Mongols actively promoted pastoralism within their early conquests at the expense of agriculture. They favored the tribal groups which were their closest allies over the local Chinese who almost certainly suffered heavier losses during the establishment of Mongolian rule in the north. A general recession of Chinese settlement in the north particularly noticeable in the Sino-Mongolian borderlands was one result. Although Qubilai, more dependent upon China and the Chinese, looked more favorably upon his Chinese subjects, Yüan policy continued to favor non-Chinese groups in the north, the Jürched, for one example. Only their Sinicized elite had been destroyed by the Mongols, not the masses of Jürched still living more or less in the traditional way as the strength of the Manchus two centuries later makes clear. In addition, most of the tribal groups probably had reproduction rates considerably higher than village and urban Chinese and were more likely to have recovered sooner demographically for any lingering effects of Mongol conquest and, given favorable conditions, to have rapidly increased in numbers. For these reasons the non-Chinese population of North China was likely to have been considerably higher proportionally in 1330 than it was in 1200, although absolute numbers may have been about the same. The figure given here seems a reasonable guess.

⁵A full history of the complex cultural interactions which have characterized North China since the dawn of recorded history are beyond the scope of this study. However, one source (from 1296) cited by Rall brings home the degree of mutual assimilation of all North Chinese cultures of the fourteenth century quite forcefully. In it the Chung-shu sheng 中書省 complains of disorder in a Peiching market called Pa-tsa-erh 八匝兒, Persian bäzär, English bazaar, making clear from the types of disorder, and activities, mentioned that the market was in every respects just that, an oriental bazaar. See Jutta Rall, Die vier grossen Medizinschulen der Mongolenzeit, Münchener ostasiatische Studien 7 (Wiesbaden, 1970), 24. The example points of the error of thinking of North China, under the Mongols, or in any period, as too narrowly Chinese in culture. Chinese culture has been as assimilative as any other and has also had to redefine itself constantly. The Yüan period is simply one era in which this redefinition was particularly striking.

⁶On the Uighurs in Yüan times see T. T. Allsen, “The Yüan Dynasty and the Uighurs of Turfan in the 13th. century,” in M. Rossabi, ed., China Among Equals (Berkeley, 1983), 243–80. See also Igor de Rachewiltz, “Turks in China under the Mongols: a preliminary investigation of Turco-Mongol relations in the 13th. and 14th. centuries,” in the same volume, 281–310. On the culture of one Eastern Turkistan Uighur community in a somewhat earlier period see also A. von Gabain, Das Leben im uighurischen Königreich von Qocho (850–1250), Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-altaica 6, vols. 1–2 (Wiesbaden, 1973).

⁷See P. Pelliot, Recherches sur les Chrétiens de l’Asie centrale et d’Extrême-orient (Paris, 1973).

⁸The term Uighur is often used indiscriminately in Yüan era texts to refer to members of both groups, pointing up the difficulty contemporaries had in distinguishing between them. Rabban Sauma, for example, is called an Uighur in some texts, although there is every indication that he was an Önggüd. See Pelliot, op. cit.: 242ff. See also Paul D. Buell’s biography of Chinqai in Igor de Rachewiltz, Chan Hok-lam, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier, editors, In the Service of the Khan, Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yuan Period (1200–1300) (Wiesbaden, 1993), 95–111, and Paul D. Buell, “Chinqai (ca. 1169–1252): Architect of Mongolian Empire,” in Opuscula Altaica, Essays Presented in Honor of Henry Schwarz, Studies on East Asia 19, eds. Edward H. Kaplan and Donald W. Whisenhunt (Bellingham, 1994), 168–86.

⁹On the Kipchaq (Qangli) and other foreign guards of the Mongol qan of China see, as an introduction, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty (Cambridge and London, 1978), 92 ff.

¹⁰See de Rachewiltz, 1983, and J. W. Dardess, Conquerors and Confucians, Aspects of Political Change in Late Yüan China (New York, 1973).

¹¹Note, however, significantly, that the fourteenth century Mongolian word for shao-ping 燒餅, “roast bun,” was ütmek, from Turkic ötmek, rather than the Chinese. See Antoine Mostaert, Le matériel mongol du Houa I I Iu de Houng-Ou (1389), Melanges Chinois et Bouddhiques 18, ed. Igor de Rachewiltz and Anthony Schönbaum (Bruxelles, 1977), 109. This same source, although reflecting the late fourteenth century usage of the Eastern Mongols, reveals other Middle Eastern borrowings for foods as well including arbus, “watermelon,” from the Persian xarbuze, “melon,” badinqa, “eggplant,” from Persian badenjan, and üdzüm, “grape,” from the Turkic üzüm.

¹²Sabban, 1986b: 171.

¹³The Sung loyalist Wang Yüan-liang, an eyewitness to Mongol feasting at Qubilai’s court as an unwilling participant, specifically mentions in his account the prominent serving of kumiss. Other foods mentioned by him are: “tender” scallions (chiu 韭), onions, served together on an engraved platter, horse meat and roasted mutton, congee to wash it down with, a ruby-red grape wine, diced chicken (?; t’ien-chi 天雞), steamed and roasted venison, bear meat, quail, and pheasant. See Wang Yüan-liang, Shui-yün chi 水雲集, Wu-lin wang-che i-shu edition, 7b–8a.

¹⁴On Tibetans at the Yüan court see Herbert Franke, “Tibetans in Yüan China,” in John D. Langlois, Jr., ed., China under Mongol Rule (Princeton, 1981), 296–328.

¹⁵We are indebted to our colleague Tamsin Hekala for pointing out that the garden burnet and cinquefoil used by Hö’elün in maintaining herself and her children under difficult conditions are not only widely-used foods but have medicinal properties as well and may have been used by Hö’elün with just these properties in mind to heal as well as feed. Burnet, for example, is used in treating dysentery, is a vermifuge, and applied externally is good for burns and various skin diseases. See Lily M. Perry and Judith Metzger, Medicinal Plants of East and Southeast Asia, Attributed Properties and Uses (Cambridge and London, 1980), 347.

¹⁶Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction (New York, 1978).

¹⁷Pierre Boudieu, La Distinction (Paris, 1979).

¹⁸Jon Elster, “Snobs,” London Review of Books, 5–18 November 1981: 10–2, and Sour Grapes (Cambridge, 1983).

¹⁹William of Rubruck, for example, records, in a passage already quoted above, that he found qan Möngke eating tsampa “for comforting his head.” See Wyngaert, 1929: 267.

²⁰Perhaps the most glaring example of the mistransmission of Mongolian words in Mongol-era Chinese sources is miswriting of Sübe’edei-ba’adur’s name by some authorities resulting in two separate biographies in the Yüan shih, one under Su-pu-t’ai 速不台, a poor transcription of his name which gets the vocalization wrong, the other under Hsüeh-pu-t’ai 雪不台. There are other, similar examples.

²¹Most often this takes place when a foreign word is identified with another word which sounds like it in the host language and assimilated to it. Thus Old Norse gata, “street,” has become “gate” in some English usage, e.g., Newgate and Highgate, whose names having nothing to do with “gates” but recall the commercial streets active in Anglo-Saxon times which gave them their names. Sometimes the misunderstanding may result from an intentional misuse by native speakers, for example, in tabu usages which may alter, sometimes greatly, the sound of a word to prevent some undesired reaction on the part of the spirits. This is probably the reason why Tolui is written Toli, a Turkicized form, in some sources, or for that matter why Cila’un, a son of Muqali, is called Taš in some sources. Both names mean “stone,” the one in Mongolian, the other in Turkic.

²²The problem was not unique to Chinese. One example which continues to haunt us is Arabic Genghiz khan.

²³On chöp see also Appendix II.

²⁴See Algar, 1985: 250ff. Turkish noodles, also börek shells, must be rolled out flat, then rolled up again, sliced and the sliced dough placed flat and rolled out again, sometimes many times.

²⁵One example, found throughout Mongol-era documents in China, is the writing of Cinggis-qan’s name as Ch’eng-chi-szu han 成吉思汗, the “Qan who has fulfilled an omen.” Other transcriptions would have been far more accurate phonologically but might not make the same ideological point.

²⁶With a few exceptions, and the proposed reconstructions are as a result very tentative, reconstructions of Mongolian, Turkic, and other foreign vocabulary made by the authors are based not only upon the phonological similarities of the Chinese and reconstructed forms but also upon the internal evidence provided by the YSCY itself. Where appropriate there has been comparison with other Mongol-era sources, which include many of the same Mongolian, Turkic, and other terms found in the YSCY in Chinese transcription, and with more recent usage. The internal YSCY evidence includes Chinese names for plants and animals, when they are provided to translate foreign terms, illustrations, textual comments, and in a few cases the meanings of the characters chosen to transliterate a foreign term.

²⁷In our identifications of Mongolian, Turkic and other non-Chinese words in the YSCY we draw heavily upon the pioneering work of others. See in particular: Lao Yan-shuan, “Notes on non-Chinese terms in the Yüan imperial dietary compendium Yin-shan Cheng-yao,” The Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica XXXIX (Oct. 1969): 399–416; and Herbert Franke, “Additional notes on non-Chinese terms in the Yüan imperial dietary compendium Yin-shan Cheng-yao,” Zentralasiatische Studien IV (1970): 7–16. Mongolian botanical and zoological names are, unless otherwise indicated, from Mongolian Terminological Commission reports already cited above.

²⁸This is the word used in the Hua-i i-yü 華夷譯語 for the jujube, see Mostaert, 1977: 46.

²⁹On the Mongolian or perhaps Siberian origins of this word see R. Gordon Wasson, Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality, Ethno-mycological Studies I ([New York], 1968), 170–1.

³⁰Lao and Franke follow F. W. Cleaves’ reconstruction of ch’u-lu-ko-hun 出魯哥潭 as cürge qun, “cürge swan,” although the term cürge refers to a species of grebe (Khalkha chörkh nugas, genus Colymbus) and not to a swan. The modern Mongolian name for Cygnus columbianus is xarlag xun and in our view the ch’u-lu-ko-hun of the text is nothing more than a somewhat defective transcription of an equivalent Middle Mongolian qarlaq qun. This is one example of how a strictly philological reconstruction of Mongolian and other terms in Yüan-era transcription can lead to error and misunderstanding. Such transcriptions are rarely as consistent as the burden placed on them by philological analysis would lead us to believe.

³¹There is some uncertainty about the reading of the second character which appears in the text to be the character wu 兀, but also has what looks like the remnant of an upper, parallel stroke suggesting that it is in fact yüan 元, and not wu. The spacing of the characters at this point also suggests that something has been left out as well. If we assume a damaged original printing block and read ch’uang-yüan 窗元 this would seem to correspond to Middle Mongolian caqa’an, Khalkha cagaan, “boiled kumiss.”

³²This word occurs as part of the title of recipe #73, where the transcription is somewhat problematical. The name of this recipe, cha-cha-erh 煤月茱兒 literally translates as “fried” cha-erh, and the recipe does indeed call for frying. Moreover, the first “cha” is dropped when ingredients are listed, indicating that Hu Szu-hui, or his editor at least, took the first cha separately, in the sense “fried.” Despite this evidence, however, we believe that the word is to be read cha-cha-erh, for Middle Mongolian jasa’a, with the “erh” being an effort to represent the final “a” after the glottal stop, and that the first cha has been dropped by mistake, by someone not realizing that this word is Mongolian, in the ingredients section. In any case, the recipe is clearly a Mongolian one for “mountain oysters” (described unmistakably) and the close phonological similarity of the Mongolian word for animal “testicle” to the Chinese name for the dish cannot be coincidental.

³³This word was also missed by Lao and Franke but the text’s ching-tai 經帶 appears to be a relatively close transcription of the Mongolian in recipe #38, and not just a Chinese description of the shape of the strips of meat and mushroom. The meaning seems to be that the “noodles” in question are “real,” i.e., are substantial food.

³⁴Easily missed by Lao and Franke since this term occurs only once and in the middle of a recipe, this is another fairly straight transcription of a Mongolian word, Chinese t’u-su 土蘇 for Mongolian *tosu[n].

³⁵*Qurim and the two terms following were missed by Lao and Franke. *Qurim is written ho-lien 荷蓮, “lotus” in the highly elaborate and unique recipe #90 but this meaning makes little sense and the word must be a transcription. The Mongolian word is in fact relatively well known and occurs in both the Secret History, as a noun in chapters 67, 131, 275; as qurimla- in chapters 50, 57, 67, 117, 130, 185, 240ff, 279; and in the Hua-i i-yü (see Mostaert, 1977: 92). The word is a deverbal noun derivative of quri-, “meet together, assemble,” and is thus related to the reciprocal action form of quri-, qurilta-, “assemble together, hold a qurilta.” The qurim is best understood as the ritual feast accompanying a qurilta.

³⁶The t’ieh-pa 鐵芭 of recipe #80 is Khalkha tabag, “plate, dish, platter, tray,” Middle Mongolian tabaq. This word is probably a borrowing from Arabic.

³⁷The t’ieh-lo 鐵絡 of recipes #49 and 94 is apparently the rare Mongolian word represented by Classical Mongolian telir, which in the compound telir sebeg means “basket for feeding animals.” See Ferdinand D. Lessing, ed., Mongolian-English Dictionary, corrected reprinting (Bloomington, 1973), 798. The word does not seem to survive in modern Khalkha. Note that in this case the transcription, “iron bucket,” seems to provide some hint of the meaning of the original Mongolian word. In view of the lack of further information about the word telir this identification must be considered highly tentative.

³⁸Pauthier, 1978: 298–9.

³⁹Pauthier, 1978: 299–301.

⁴⁰Pauthier, 1978: 301.

⁴¹Pauthier, 1978: 303–5.

⁴²Pauthier, 1978: 308.

⁴³Pauthier, 1978: 308, 310.

⁴⁴Although, according to William of Rubruck, the Mongols knew and ate carp (Wyngaert, 1929: 260).

⁴⁵See, for example, properties assigned gathered plant foods in Damrinbazar, 1991: 149ff, and passim. We have only begun to study the history of Mongolian folk medicine in part because so few texts have been published.

⁴⁶Pine nuts were an extremely popular food with the Mongols according to the Persian historian Juvaini, who refers to the nut of the Siberian pine (Pinus cembra), qusuq, as their “dessert.” See ’Ala-ad-din ’Ata-Malik Juvaini, The History of the World-Conqueror, trans. by J. A. Boyle, vols. 1–2 (Manchester, 1958), I, 21. The usage of the YSCY almost certainly reflects the Mongolian preference, although we have every reason to assume that pine nuts were known to and consumed by Chinese as well.

⁴⁷On this fungus see Kitamura Shirō, “Inzenseiyō no shokubutsu,” Acta Phytotax. Geobot. 24 (1969): 65–76 (72).

⁴⁸In the text the tsaoko cardamom (Anzornum tsao-ko), a general term there for “large” cardamoms. They have large (2–3 cm) fruits with thick shells and intensely aromatic seeds. In cooking, one fruit will flavor a whole stew, for example in “sand pot” cooking. There is considerable confusion regarding cardamoms in East Asia literature. See, for example, the discussion in the Pen-ts’ao kang-mu (PTKM), vols. 1–2 (Hong Kong, 1979), I, 14, 26ff, where Li Shih-chen correctly distinguishes between large, ts’ao-kuo 莗杲 and small, tou-k’ou 豆蔲 cardamoms, but also reproduces a great deal of obsolete traditional lore as well, confusing the issue. A basic distinction is to be made between small, true cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum, and a whole class of larger, darker, more camphor-flavored cardamoms of the genus Amomum, called for here.

Amomum fruits, “large” and “brown cardamoms” of commerce, occur in several species in China. Many were known and distinguished, at least in south China, by Medieval times. See Edward Schafer, The Vermilion Bird, T’ang Images of the South (Berkeley, 1967), 193–4. Hu Szu-hui’s beloved ts’ao-kuo is properly A. tsao-ko, but we suspect several species are conflated here. A. compactum (sens. lat.) and A. globosum (if they are indeed distinct) are good probabilities.

Another of these cardamoms is so-sha 縮砂 (=so-sha-mi 縮砂米), “grain-of-paradise,” mentioned in the YSCY. It is identified as A. xanthioides in Stuart. See G. Stuart, Chinese Materia Medica (Shanghai, 1911), 36–9. This is very possibly too exact. A. villosum is another name often given for this plant, e.g., in the CYTT (1623). There this Amomum sp. is called by its alternative name sha-jen 沙仁, “sand kernel.” On the terminological confusion, see I. H. Burkill, A Dictiorzary of Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula (Gainesville, 1966), 137; Stuart 1911: 38–9.

True cardamom is known in China as pai tou k’ou 白豆蔲, “white nutmeg.” Although well described in the Nan-fang ts’ao-mu chuang (Li, 1979: 38–9; the illustration is not from the original text and is not very accurate). It rarely occurs in Chinese cooking and in the YSCY is only called for twice (for example, 2, 6a–b).

Cardamoms are carminative and digestive, and in China are held to be warming and strengthening, especially the true cardamom, but, at least in folk practice observed by ENA, the large ones also. The large ones are regularly used in Chinese health cookery, in protein-rich tonic soups like those of the YSCY, and may be found sold for that purpose in all complete Oriental markets. They also figure importantly in Indian and southeast Asian cooking. A Western notion that they are merely inferior substitutes for true cardamom is incorrect. Throughout Asia, they are regarded as separate spices with different names and uses.

For an excellent sixteenth century discussion of cardamom, what the ancient and modern authors thought about them, and the trade at the time, see Garcia da Orta, Colóquios dos simples e drogns da índia, vols. 1–2 (Lisboa, 1987), II, 173–91. The original edition of da Orta’s work was published in 1563 in Goa.

⁴⁹One major influence on West Asian cuisine has been the Judeo-Islamic tradition of food taboos. Blood, and sometimes such blood-rich organs as lung and liver, are avoided. Thus such recipes as #77, “Red Strips,” in which sheep’s blood is combined with flour to make a kind of noodle, would be unthinkable in the Near East since the seventh and eighth centuries. However, noodles and dumplings using blood as a nutritive binder are common in central Europe, specifically in German-influenced cuisines, today. One example of such a food is Icelandic slátur, prepared from oats, sugar, raisins, sheep’s fat, and sheep’s blood. Probably a relationship across the steppes, perhaps extending into central Europe, is involved. Islam also forbids not only pigs but also other animals banned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Thus, such items as wolf, otter, bear, donkey, and badger represent a strictly Central and East Asian presence in the YSCY.

⁵⁰Note that this is the typical way of cooking with chickpeas in the Muslim world, even until this day. Removal of the skins is also characteristic of Middle Eastern use of chickpeas. According to Heine, (1988: 69), chickpeas were added to dishes to even out flavors, absorb them, and provide otherwise lacking consistency, as is clearly the case here.

⁵¹A sixteenth century court etiquette book from the Moghul court (the ’Ain-i-Akhbari) includes the following “Mongolian” recipe called, significantly, a shölen:

1 Ib meat

1/4 lb dried chickpeas

2 tsp salt

1/2 oz fresh ginger

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp pepper

1 cup rice

2 oz butter

half an onion

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp cardamom

1/8 tsp clove

Bring the meat to the boil in 5 cups of water with the salt; skim, add the chickpeas and cook for 1 1/2 hours, then add the rice and cook for another 1/2 hour, stirring from time to time and adding water as needed to keep a porridgy consistency. The onion and garlic would be fried with the spices and stirred in toward the end.

See Charles Perry, “A Mongolian Dish,” Petits Propos Culinaire 19 (March, 1985): 53–5. Note the great similarity of this dish to the mutton/cardamom šülen of the YSCY.

⁵²See Laufer, 1919: 361.

⁵³The Chinese wen-chan 穩展 is much closer to the Arabic derivative than the Persian original. See the discussion of these words in Laufer, 1919: 361.

⁵⁴This is a heavily palatalized, Turkic form of Arabic mastaki. Mastajhi or Mastiki, from Greek mastikh, is made from the resin of Pistacia lentiscus. It is most often used in powdered form in modern Middle Eastern cooking to remove unwanted flavors from meats, but is also a spice, particularly in breads, in its own right, as is apparently the case here. The application in this recipe is typical of Middle Eastern usage of both the past and the present. On Chinese early references to mastiki see Laufer, 1919: 252–3.

⁵⁵In chüan 3 (2b) ho-hsi-mi 河西米, literally “Tangut grain,” is said to the be “hardest of all grains.” This must be durum or “hard” wheat, Arabic qamh, a word which appears to be reproduced, somewhat defectively, unless we assume that the “hsi” is an attempt to reproduce the guttural sounds of the original word, by the Chinese transcription. It can also be taken to mean that this kind of wheat was first grown in the Ho-hsi or Tangut/eastern Uighur area, something not unexpected if durum was introduced from the West via the Silk Route. This may be another example of how characters of YSCY transcriptions of foreign words often are more than simple phonological renderings and also carry meaning. In a letter of 7 June, 1993 to PDB, Françoise Sabban raises a number of objections to this identification, “meme si cela est séduisant…” Briefly she argues that the generic mi is always applied to rice and millet but never to wheat, a fact which must have been well known to Hu Szu-hui, well grounded as he was in Chinese culture, that the cultivation of durum wheat in China is not confirmed by other sources and is in fact entirely unknown outside of the possible YSCY references, and that durum wheat is very slow cooking as whole grains and would be an unlikely ingredient in recipe #48, for example, where cooking is entirely by boiling. Prof. Sabban’s points, as always, are carefully considered and we respond in detail to them here due to the potential importance of the YSCY references in the history of pasta:

While it is true that any person well-educated in the Chinese language and in Chinese culture such as Hu Szu-hui would have been well aware of the standard usage of mi in reference to rice or millet, and not to wheat, the term ho-hsi-mi may not have been his invention. The term may in fact have originated in the culturally mixed environment of the China frontier where traditional linguistic distinctions were not so well drawn. Hu may simply have taken it over unchanged out of already established usage, linguistically accurate or not. In addition, if ho-hsi-mi is a transcription of Arabic qamh, the character mi, “rice or millet grain,” was chosen more for its phonetic than semantic value. Mi is not confined in usage just to “rice and millet.” Job’s Tears and Pearl barley can also be mi and a careful search of the sources will no doubt turn up many other examples as well.
It is true that the cultivation of durum wheat is otherwise unattested in China, but Hu nowhere says that the grain was cultivated in China. He merely says that it “comes from Ho-hsi” (3, 2b), in complete contrast to another Western import, the chickpea, which he characterizes as grown here and there in China (by Muslims). Hu’s ho-hsi-mi is thus quite possibly an exotic import from Turkistan or farther afield known under a local name that refers to its point of appearance, not point of origin. Hu’s Ho-hsi, in any case, as is abundantly clear from his use of the term to describe what is known indubitably as an “Uighur” dish from other sources (his “Tangut Lungs,” recipe #55, the “West of the River Lungs” from the CCPYSL, 13, 19a–b), is not just the old Tangut domains but includes associated portions of Turkistan just to the west. Thus, Hu neither claims that the grain is grown in China, nor does he directly associate it with China. At best he associates it with China borderlands that were not very Chinese in the Mongol era. The history of durum wheat cultivation in China is as a consequence largely irrelevant in this context, the exotic uses of the Mongol court.
The point about durum wheat grains being slow cooking is extremely well-taken. None the less, there is no indication in the recipe in question (#48) how long the cooking is to be; it could easily be overnight or longer. Given the Mongol propensity for boiling the essence out of foods this would not be incomprehensible. Second, YSCY recipes are remarkably concise but leave out important details. What was really involved, for example, in the “scouring” of the durum grains called for in the recipe. Was the scouring done after boiling and intended to remove the hard outer covering of the wheat grains and thus facilitate cooking? The cooking called for in the recipe might not be so unreasonable even for durum if we knew all the details.
Ho-hsi-mi is specifically referred to as the “hardest of all grains.” Such “hardness,” while characteristic of durum wheat and the origin of its name, is not so readily applicable to either millet or rice, both of which are relatively easily milled, especially after a light soaking. Why does Hu make such a point about the “hardness” of ho-hsi-mi unless he is referring to something quite beyond the Chinese experience, e.g., durum. It is this reference to the particular hardness of the grain, coupled with what appears to be an attempt to transcribe an Arabic word for durum in its Chinese name, that leads us to conclude that ho-hsi-mi is in fact durum, although in the YSCY it is little more than an exotic import. We agree with Sabban that there is little evidence for the widespread use or cultivation of durum wheat in the China of the era.

⁵⁶This is Franke’s guess but in our view he is quite correct. See Franke, 1970: 11. On qatiq see Doerfer, 1963–75: III, 374–5.

⁵⁷On this word see Franke, 1970. The form here, su-su 速速, i.e., *su(q)su(r), is clearly akin to the Modern Uighur form suqsur. It is unclear whether or not Khalkha soqsor, as in sogsor nugas for Anas acuta, is a loan word from a Turkic language or the reverse. If the word is originally Mongolian, this is still another example of Hu Szu-hui’s Turkic lapses. See below.

⁵⁸The reconstruction here is hypothetical. The illustration in the text shows a nondescript swan which could be Cygnus olor, although lacking the distinctive black head marking. If it is Cygnus olor it is probably an immature one. We suggest, for that reason, that su-erh-ch’i-la 速兒乞剌 represents something close to Kazakh surqylt, “gray, grayish one” or “having become whitened, lost color,” and here refers to the immature Cygnus olor, or possibly other immature Cygnus spp. The usage would thus be similar to Kazakh kögildirlik, “bluish, greenish,” used to refer to a swan chick or fledgling. The Khalkha name for this swan is al-süül, “red tail.” The first part of the Chinese transcription, su-erh-ch’i-la, could be se’ül but such an interpretation does not explain the ch’i-la.

⁵⁹This term was missed by Lao and Franke. The “su” is probably Turkic süt, milk, but the rest of the transcription is highly uncertain. We conjecture that the original was something similar to Kazakh süttigen, “having a basis in milk,” with the middle syllable devoiced as it would be in Kazakh. This would provide a form relatively close to the transcription, i.e., su-ch’ien 鮇簽/*su[t]qen/*süttigen. Note that here again the Chinese characters chosen to represent the non-Chinese sounds of the word often give a suggestion of meaning as well as phonology. Su-yu 穌油, or in the transcription, su, is liquid butter in the YSCY. This appears to be one of the earliest references to what later became known as “Mongolian tea” in Central Asia and would seem to indicate, if our Turkic reconstruction is correct, that the Mongols borrowed the practice from some Turkic group.

⁶⁰The Chinese is a-ts’ai 阿菜, a fairly good transcription of Uighur achchiq (a-ts’ai/*atsai[q]/*achchaiq/*achchiq), even closer to the modern Kazakh form ashchy. The recipe, #14, with the lesser galangal, the Sheep’s Liver Sauce, kidneys and mushrooms would probably be very sour in fact.

⁶¹The text’s po-tsao 撥糟/*bozao/*boza is given as an alternative to sürma, clearly a brandy in the YSCY, although originally a beer. Boza is, however, without question a beer (usually fermented from millet) rather than a brandy so that the equation of sürma and boza, in the YSCY at least, is not entirely correct. See the discussion of boza in Appendix II and in Doerfer, 1963–75: II, 337–41.

⁶²On the semantics of the Chinese name for this noodle see above.

⁶³A ch’un-p’an 春盤 (recipe #34), or “Spring Plate,” is traditionally a plate of fresh greens presented as an honor to some elderly or otherwise distinguished personage. This ch’un-p’an is a noodle soup and the term must represent a foreign word, in this case chöppün or chöp bün[i], “noodle soup.” On chöp see above. On mün (here assimilated to the p of chöp) see Appendix II. Our colleague Olav Hekala (personal communication to PDB) notes that a ch’un-p’an can be a noodle soup in Korea. This may be a Mongol-era borrowing.

⁶⁴The Chinese is cheng-ping 鉦餅, “cheng cakes,” or “cheng bread.” The description (in recipe #93) makes it certain that chuqmin, which is also steamed “in a special pot,” is meant. See Appendix II.

⁶⁵The Chinese transcription, ch’i-szu-ko 乞思哥, is clearly chiziq and the hsi 細 preceding ch’i-szu-ko simply means “fine” and is not part of the transcription. Compare pai 白 nabat, “white” nabat (See Lao, 1969: 407). On chiziq see G. Doerfer, 1963–75: III, 2–3.

⁶⁶The transcription seems rather straightforward, i.e., wei-hsiang 圍像 /*uish[k]ian[a]/*ishkänä. On ishkänä see G. Doerfer, 1963–75: IV, 261. This word may be perfectly good Turkic in which case the ish- or esh- means “one of a pair, companion.” The similarity to the Western companatium, “food eaten with bread,” is striking. Note the much-assimilated, modern Iranian recipe for ehkeneh, here an “onion soup,” in Batmanglij, 1990: 33.

⁶⁷The Chinese, in recipe #24 is chih-chia-pien shih 指甲匾食, “chih-chia-pien” or “finger-nail-tablet” food. This makes no sense and seems to be a transcription. The second element may be kebap or kebabi and the first can represent a jish, a form more like the modern Uighur zix than the expected sis or shish. This may be one of the earliest references to shish-kebab. In view of the lack of other references to early shish-kebab in the sources of the time this identification must be considered extremely tentative.

⁶⁸The Chinese chüeh-mien 撧麵 in recipe #17, literally “chüeh” noodles, makes no sense and must be a transcription.

⁶⁹See the discussion of this word in Buell, 1999. In our view the man-t’ou 饅頭 of the YSCY and of other contemporary sources has nothing to do whatever, other than sharing a name, with the unfilled steamed bun called man-t’ou 饅頭 (or 蠻頭, etc.) still eaten, particularly in south China, where it has considerable antiquity, going back at least to Han times if not before. See, for example, the traditions summarized in Murohashi Tetsuji, Dai kanwa jiten, 13 volumes, Taipei: Pei-i ch’u-pan-she, 1987: 12: 424a–b. The YSCY’s man-t’ou is a Central Asia food, the later Uighur manta and Kazakh manty etc., probably derived from the mamata (if this is the correct reading; other possibilities are yamata, tamata) of Mahmud al-Kashghari’s dictionary. See Mahmud al-Kashgari, Divanü lûgat-it-Türk tercümesi, vols. 1–3 (Ankara, 1985), 445. Mamata is defined by Mahmud as “dough smeared on fat chicken or meat so that the fat will not run out when the meat is roasted.” See Perry in Appendix II. This is interestingly exactly what is called for in one of Ni Tsan’s man-t’ou recipes (YLTYSCTC, pp 6–7). We also find something similar in the YSCY’s eggplant skin wrapped man-t’ou (recipe #83). If Uighur manta etc. does derive from Mahmud’s mamata (mamata>mamta>manta) then what was originally a dough-wrapped fat piece of meat has become a dough-skin-wrapped steamed bun with meat filling. This fact, and the similarly sounding name, is probably why Hu and his contemporaries choose to transcribe the name of this new bread food with the same characters used for the south Chinese man-t’ou. On the popularity of the manta/manty throughout the Turkic world see Doerfer, 1963–75: IV: 23–4.

⁷⁰On this word see Appendix II and Doerfer, 1963–75: II: 321. Note that the Chinese form, p’ieh-lieh 撇列, clearly indicates an initial “p.” The word may ultimately be from the Chuvash or their ancestors who gave the same word to the Slavs, among whom it appears as pirog.

⁷¹The Chinese is ch’ien-tzu 簽子, a flat, bamboo tally, also a bamboo slip, which makes no sense here. This must be a foreign word and the phonological similarity to Turkic qezi (ch’ien-tzu/*qenza/*qeza/*qezi) cannot be an accident. On the preparation of qezi or qazi from sheep intestines see Doerfer, 1963–75: III, 359–60.

⁷²The Chinese, in recipe #38 is chiao-jou ch’i-ma 焦肉乞馬, a fairly straightforward transcription (chiao-jou ch’i-maljaorou[q] qimalqoruq qima). Note that the first two characters translate meaning as well as transliterate.

⁷³In one recipe (YSCY 1, 48b), this word, a Turkic form of Mongolian šülen, is written shih-lo 時蘿 which, when the top character has the leaf radical, i.e., 蒔蘿, is also used to write Persian zhira, “cumin,” although in that case the borrowing is an old one and the modern shih-lo should more properly be read zila. In any case, no cumin is called for here and shih-lo must be Turkic shilön, and the recipe does call for the piräk to be cooked in water. See Lao, 1969: 411–2. Compare the similar recipe in the CCPYSL (14, 32a–b).

⁷⁴Franke (Franke, 1970: 9) prefers to read the first character of the name of recipe #44 ch’o, rather than the expected shuo 搠. Either way, shuo-lo 搠蘿 or ch’o-lo represents Uighur šoyla, “a very thick porridge consisting mostly of rice, fat, carrots and meat” (Schwarz, 1992: 523). The second word is clearly toyyim, a word not in the Schwarz dictionary but in Kazakh meaning “abundance,” “profusion, “satiation,” a derivative of toy, “feast.”

⁷⁵On the transcription of this word see above. The CCPYSL gives the following recipe for Shui-hua Noodles:

Use the best quality flour. During the spring, the summer and the autumn use freshly drawn water. Add oil and salt. First mix together uniformly. When the flour becomes dough-like, gradually add water. Press together into balls. Use the hands to [press] open. Make into [flat] lumps. Then sprinkle with oil and water. Combine by kneading one or two hundred times. After doing this three or four times, the dough will be very soft, like a cake. With the dough placed on a table, use an ao-p’eng 坳捧 and roll out more than a hundred times. If one does not have an ao-p’eng knead a hundred times with the hands. When the dough is ready, it can then be divided to make noodle fingernails. Put into recently cooled water. Soak for a couple of hours or so, waiting until the noodles are ready. Then put into the pot. [The noodles] will be ample and fine. Make them as one pleases. During the winter months soak the noodles in warm water. (18, 21b)

Compare the following a recipe for stuffed salma from the Kitab al-Tibakhah (Perry, 1985):

Salma: Dough is taken and twisted and cut in small pieces and struck like a coin with a finger, and it is cooked in water until done. Then yogurt is put with it and meat is fried with onion for it and mint and garlic are put with it.

The ao-p’eng of the first text may be a somewhat defective transcription of oklava, the characteristic Turkic rolling pin, in this case of a form more akin to Kazakh oqtaw, perhaps a little more palatalized. On the oklava see Algar, 1991: 174. We are indebted to Prof. Henry Schwarz for discussing possible forms of this word with us. This identification should be considered extremely tentative.

⁷⁶The Chinese transcription in recipe #10 is suan-tzu 筭子, “abacus counter,” in this case conferring both the idea of a round pasta and the foreign sound samsa (suamza/sämsa/samsa), Turkic form of the more common Persian sambusa from Arabic sanzbusak.

⁷⁷The suma given in the dictionary of Muhammad al-Kashgari, who may have misheard or mistranscribed the vocalization of his informant, may be a variant of *sürmä. See Appendix II.

⁷⁸The Uighur suyqaš (<suyuq-aš) of the present day is characteristically a small square-shaped noodle. This is the very idea which the Chinese name for this noodle, ch’i-tzu 食其子, is attempting to communicate since the character chosen to write the first part of the word closely resembles the Chinese character for go counter, ch’i 碁 (or 棋), pointing up the square shape of this noodle. Although the fit is not a good one, we suspect that ch’i-tzu is here a transcription as well as an ideograph, an attempt to represent the Uighur suyqa[š], or more likely some other closely related Turkic form, i.e., an ancestral suyuq, without the final aš (qiza/qi[e]za[sh]/cieqa[sh]/suyqa[sh]). We are grateful to Julia Fearing for discussing modern Uighur suyqaš with us.

⁷⁹The Chinese is t‘ien-ti 田地. Since the wine is Uighur, this word should be Uighur also and the phonological resemblance of the word to Turkic tngri, “heaven,” cannot be accidental.

⁸⁰On this food see details in Appendix II and Doerfer, 1963–75: II, 457–9. The characteristic of this the tutmach noodle, according to Perry, is that it is a sturdy, rolled out noodle.

⁸¹The form uma[ch] ash, with a softening of the “ch” sound of the ending, instead of the expected umach, corresponds to modern Turkistanian usage. See G. Doerfer, 1963–75: II, 123–4. This is the ovmach, “small soup noodles, pea-shaped dumplings,” or, locally, “a vegetable porridge,” of Appendix II.

⁸²The ma-ch’i 馬乞of the text is apparently an alternative form, from some other Turkic language, for wu-ma-shih 兀麻食, um-ash. This may be an indication that Hu used different Turkic sources for his recipes.

⁸³The full title of the recipe in question (YSCY, 1, 48a) is “butter skin” yen-tzu 掩子, or “butter skin” yubqa (yemza/yem[b]qa/yubqa, with devoicing of the first vowel), a title making very clear that a buttered, thin dough sheet is meant, not unlike modern phyllo, used in making modern yubqa in Turkey today. On this word see Appendix II and Doerfer, 1963–75: IV: 211–12.

⁸⁴On this word see Doerfer, 1963–75: III, 390–1. The transcription is a relatively straight forward one (a-ch ’ih 阿赤/qachiq/qashiq).

⁸⁵Yapinchi is here written fan-p’i 番皮, literally “barbarian skin,” a problematical but still acceptable transcription of either yapinchi, or one of many related dialectical forms (Doerfer, 1963–75: IV: 50–2). The word comes from the Turkic verbal root yap-, “cover.”

⁸⁶“Muslim Lesser Oil” is not further identified in the text but, judging from the usage, must be a vegetable oil. The most likely possibility is unrefined sesame oil, the favored Muslim cooking oil in areas where olive oil was unavailable or too expensive (such as China). No “Muslim Greater Oil” is mentioned in the text but the CCPYSL (13, 18b) does mention a “Muslim Oil,” almost certainly ghee.

⁸⁷The same observation can be made for the “Islamic (Hui-hui) recipes” in the CCPYSL (13, 17a–19b). Of the 12 recipes given, no less than 5 have Turkic names while two others (“West of the River Lungs” and the halwa) are basically Turkic recipes. For a complete translation see Buell, 1999.

⁸⁸The CCPYSL (11, 23a–b) gives the following recipe for “Rice heart” suyqa[sh]:

Add cool water to the best flour. Add salt, combine and form into lumps. After having worked the dough, careful that it does not become too thin, cut into delicate squares [go counters]. After pressing through a fine bamboo sieve again use a knife and cut. After having pressed through a fine bamboo sieve and cut a thousand or a hundred times, re-cut any coarse noodles into fine. If there is excess flour, again press through a sieve etc. Cook in soup. When done, remove noodles with soup and put into a cup of cool water. Stir around. Fish noodles out and set out to dry. [To cook] use sesame oil. Add [as filling]: chunks of meat, pieces of sweet melon pickle, pieces of Sauce Melon, pieces of cucumber, basil, etc.

A recipe for Sauce Melon, in this case made from sweet melon, is given elsewhere in the CCPYSL (12, 66a–b):

Take 10 immature sweet melons and skewer with bamboo spits. Apply 4 liang of salt. Put inside the melons. Squeeze out the liquid and let the melons dry. Apply evenly with 10 liang of “sauce.” Dry in the sun on a hot day. Turn over the melons several times and dry again until completely dry. Put into a new porcelain container. Close container. Use salt and use “sauce.” employing them to the best advantage in terms of the size and quantity of the melons.

This and other pickle recipes of the text are not particularly Chinese and the ultimate inspiration is probably Middle Eastern.

⁸⁹For a discussion of many of these noodles see now Françoise Sabban, “Ravioli cristallins et tagliatelle rouges: les pâtes chinoises entre xii^e et xiv^e siècle,” Medievales 16–7 (1989): 29–50.

⁹⁰Refined sugar was already common in China by 1330 where it may have been known, in the south at least, for as long as a thousand years. It was, for example, already well known to Chi Han (Li, 1979: 55ff). In the Near East too sugar had been known since classical times where a great expansion of the sugar industry took place in early Islamic times (Watson 1981, 1983). In China, Wang Shao’s 王紹 1153 T’ang-shuang P’u 糖霜言普 (Treatise on Crystallized Sugar), among other sources, reflects a sophisticated knowledge of producing raw sugar from cane and then whiter sugar from the raw. The T’ien-kung K’ai-wu 天工開物 describes, for Ming, an extremely sophisticated sugar technology, not much inferior in terms of products to modern industry. See Sung Ying-hsing 宋應星, T’ien-kung K’ai-wu, trans. by E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun (University Park, 1966). Most of this probably already existed by late Yüan. The best white was close to ours today, but took a great deal more time and effort to produce than modern white sugar. It was expensive, a food for the emperor. China’s sugar center was, and long remained, in the Canton Delta, where small holders produced much of it. Sugar is easier to produce on plantations than on small farms, because of the huge mills needed. It usually accompanies the most socially unequal and regressive of socioeconomic systems (George Beckford, Persistent Poverty (Oxford, 1972); Mintz, 1985). In the Delta, the maze of waterways eliminated the need for plantations. Cane could be boated to mills, or, in a more uniquely Chinese approach, mills mounted on barges were actually moved from farm to farm (Sucheta Mazumdar, n.d., and personal communication to ENA)! Meanwhile, in India and Persia, the same technology developed. Indeed, China’s early sugar technology was derived from theirs. Sugar became highly important in medicine in those areas, because of its soothing qualities and its value as a vehicle for other medicines, as well as because of alleged medical virtues and the fact that it and its products tend to be pleasing and cheering. Syrups, sharbats, confits, jams, preserves, and other confectionery became preferred ways to administer all kinds of medicinal substances, perhaps especially naturally sweet fruits. This technology is notably well reflected in the YSCY, a point that is particularly interesting since little else that is directly West Asian is found in the medical sections. In China, sugar was also medicinal, but in a different way: brown sugar was heating, “ice” (rock) sugar and raw sugar cane were cooling. All sugar was believed valuable in compounds to harmonize ingredients.

⁹¹Such fruit jams and jellies were completely foreign to Chinese tradition and not a feature of Chinese life except as minor medicinal preparations.

⁹²According to Mintz (1985: 97–8): “to prepare [a rubb]…, fruits and flower petals were immersed in hot water to which sugar was added, and the whole preparation was boiled down until it was concentrated.” This was distinct from a julab, which was prepared in a similar fashion but was less thick (Mintz, 1985: 98), and a shurba, a very viscid juice that would now break when two fingers were thrust into it, removed and then extended (Mintz, 1985: 97). For other categories see also Mintz, 1985: 98.

⁹³Sharbat are also well represented (under that name) in the CCPYSL (11, 15b–17b).

⁹⁴Recipes of this sort are a marker of an age when distillation was new and far from widespread, and is hard to pin down as to exact origin. Clearly this method would have been of special usefulness to the Mongols, given Mongolian climatic conditions, and would have readily adapted itself to distillation of fruit “beers” that must have been made on the steppe. This is because most natural fruits and berries begin fermentation on their own if left to sit and the results of alternately freezing and thawing, or semi-thawing, such “beers” must have been only too readily apparent to the Mongols. Turkic experience may have applied here as well since Uighurs and other Turkic groups would not only have been among the first to acquire ideas of distillation coming from the West; note, for example, that one word in the YSCY, for a brandy, sürmä, is apparently Uighur, but also, quite likely, made “beers” from fruits and berries and probably observed the same changes occasioned by alternately freezing and thawing. On freeze distillation see the discussion in Joseph Needham, Ho Ping-yü and Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part IV: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Apparatus, Theories and Gifts (Cambridge, 1980), 151ff.

⁹⁵Compare Heine, 1988: 82–6.

⁹⁶Heine, 1988: 66.

⁹⁷Shaykh Nefzawi, The Perfumed Garden, trans. from the Arabic by Richard Burton, ed. Alan Hull Walston (Berkeley and New York, 1964).

⁹⁸Martin Levey, trans., The Medical Formulary or Aqrabadhin of Al-Kindi (Madison, 1966), 230–1.

⁹⁹Some of the other medicinals of this recipe, including the Melia azedarch, appear very Chinese but were very important in Arabic medicine too, as was liquorice, in powdered form as here. The medicinal properties of orange peel were also known to Arabic doctors, although the form of the medicinal here is unquestionably Chinese.

¹⁰⁰On this combination see Levey, 1966: 230–1. Sabban (1986b) long ago pointed out the Arab origins of these recipes.

¹⁰¹See Mintz, 1985: 96ff, for similar Arabic medicine contributions to the Medieval West.

¹⁰²See Luisa Cogliate Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis (New York, 1976). See also Ullmann, 1978: 99.

¹⁰³The examples discussed above indicative of possible direct influence of Arabic humoral medicine traditions upon the YSCY are only those which stand out. There may be many other not so obvious examples as well. The research of a specialist, one who can make a detailed comparison of YSCY recipes with those contained in medieval Arab formularies, is needed. But what little we already know suggests that this will be a fruitful line of future inquiry.

¹⁰⁴Rice was a common food called for by both the Chinese and West Asian culinary traditions of the time. In a Chinese-language dietary one would logically expect the rice to be Chinese rice. But in fact virtually all YSCY recipes calling for rice specify a fragrant or aromatic rice. This is presumably something similar to the basmati rice of Punjab. Most Chinese do not like such markedly flavorful rices, finding them too much for daily fare. They are more characteristic of India, where aromatic rice was preferred in Moghul court pilafs, of the Arab and Persian world (e.g., domsiyah), also of Uzbekistan (dewzira), places where rice is enough of a special dish to make a special flavor desirable. But some Chinese do like fragrant rice, e.g., the old long-grain varieties of Thailand and Hong Kong, which are not as strong-tasting as basmati. This preference might have been more common in the rice-poor north in the middle ages so that the rice-usage here can represent both West Asian and Chinese traditions. In any case, the aromatic rice of the YSCY was probably not unappealing to the Chinese palate of the era.

¹⁰⁵The reason usually advanced for the virtual absence of pork in the YSCY is that Hu Szu-hui was a Muslim. He quite likely was, but his work includes recipes for other animals, e.g., wolves, donkeys, horses, equally abominations to the orthodox. A more likely reason for the absence of pork recipes in the YSCY is the simple fact that there were no pig herds in Mongolia and it was not an animal with which the Mongols had had a great deal of experience. Recent Mongols also reject pork because the pig is considered a dirty animal consuming excrement and other filth but we do not know how far into the past this belief, rooted in recent Mongol conflicts with Chinese, extends. See the discussion in Uradyn Erden Bulag, “Nationalism and Identity in Mongolia” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1993). In any case, the absence of pork from YSCY recipes does show how different its food culture is from that of south China.

¹⁰⁶See the discussion of these thinkers in Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (Berkeley, 1985), 172ff. See also Rall, 1970. We are indebted to Paul Unschuld (unpublished letter of 16 July, 1990 to PDB) for pointing out to us the importance of Sung-Chin-Yüan Correspondence Medicine in YSCY.

¹⁰⁷There are three distinct texts today known collectively as the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon: the Huang-ti nei-ching ling-shu 黃帝內經靈樞, “Numinous Pivot of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon,” possibly fifth century AD in its present form, the Huang-ti nei-ching su-wen 黃帝內經素問, “Everyday Questions of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, “the present version of which appeared in AD 762, and the Huang-ti nei-ching t’ai-su 黃帝內經太素, “General Synopsis of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon,” seventh century AD, as it currently exists. Although supposedly reproducing knowledge obtained directly from the greatest of all Chinese culture heroes, the Yellow Emperor (traditional dates 2697–2598 BC), and clearly incorporating much earlier material, some going back to Han times or earlier, as is evident from a comparison with other early medical texts, the existing versions of the canon not only do not reproduce the sagely words of the Yellow Emperor, but are best taken as representing Southern and Northern Dynasties thought, as codified by and large in T’ang times.

¹⁰⁸See in particular Unschuld, 1985.

¹⁰⁹We are indebted to Christopher Muench for this insight, growing out of our research on the Ah-fong legacy in Idaho. See Christopher Muench, “One hundred years of medicine: the Ah-Fong physicians of Idaho,” in Chinese Medicine on the Golden Mountain, An Interpretive Guide, ed. H. G. Schwarz (Bellingham, 1984), 51–80, and also Paul D. Buell and Christopher Muench, “Chinese medical recipes from frontier Seattle,” Annals of the Chinese Historical Society of the Pacific Northwest, II (1984): 100–43.

¹¹⁰Unschuld, 1985: 17–28.

¹¹¹For an excellent introduction to the uncanny side of Chinese medicine as it still exists today see N. H. Van Straten, Concepts of Health Disease and Vitality in Traditional Chinese Society, Münchener ostasiatische Studien 34 (Wiesbaden, 1983).

¹¹²On what Unschuld calls “demonic medicine” see Unschuld, 1985: 29ff.

¹¹³On shamanism in early China see A. Waley, The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China (London, 1955). On shamanism in general see also Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Bollingen Series LXXVI, trans, from the French by Willard R. Trask (Princeton, 1964).

¹¹⁴See Unschuld, 1985: 22.

¹¹⁵On this tradition see, as an introduction, Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part II: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Magisteries of Gold and Immortality (Cambridge, 1974). For a history of Chinese herbal literature see Unschuld, 1986. See also the discussion in Unschuld, 1985: 101ff.

¹¹⁶On the earliest history of Chinese acupuncture see Yamada Keiji, Shinhatsugen Chūgoku kagakushi shiryō no kenkyū (Kyōto, 1985), 3–122.

¹¹⁷On the relationship between the two in Han times see Yamada Keiji, op. cit., 225–62. We are indebted to Prof. Yamada for making reprints of sections of his valuable book available.

¹¹⁸See as an introduction to the Chinese philosophy of the time A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, 1989), 313ff. See also T. Roger Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought (Honolulu, 1983) and the latest views in R. P. Peerenboom, Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao (Albany, 1993).

¹¹⁹See, as a recent contribution to the subject, Ute Engelhardt, Die klassische Tradition der Qi-Übungen (Qigong), Münchener ostasiatische Studien 44 (Stuttgart, 1988).

¹²⁰On this see E. N. Anderson, “Why is humoral medicine so popular?,” Social Science and Medicine 25 (1987): 4: 331–7.

¹²¹In another interpretation, the upper burner refers to organs above the diaphragm, including the heart and liver, the middle burner to organs between the diaphragm and the navel, and the lower burner to lower organs, including intestines, bladder, kidneys, and even liver.

¹²²Unpublished letter of 16 July, 1990 to PDB.

¹²³In actuality “herbal” is somewhat of a misnomer since not only plants but also minerals and parts of animals are used. Of 1,892 materia medica listed in PTKM, 1,173 or 62.0% are of herbal origin, 444 or 23.5% are of zoological origin and 275 or 14.5% are of mineralogical origin. However, most medicines in common use in Chinese herbal medicine today are in fact of herbal origin. Today only a few animal drugs are being used because many animals have become rare or endangered species. The materia dietica of the YSCY, in view of the nature of this text as a dietary, include very few minerals, and a relatively high proportion of foods of animal origin, especially in view of Mongolian traditions reflected in the text.

¹²⁴For a history of the Chinese herbal literature which played such an important part in this systemization see Unschuld, 1986.

¹²⁵For example, one very old way of classifying drugs involved assignment to one of the following four categories:

Chün 君, “lord” drugs, major ingredients to treat major dysfunctions;
Ch’en 臣, “minister” drugs, to accelerate the effects of major ingredients;
Tso 佐, “assistant” drugs, to assist further the major ingredients and prevent side effects;
Shih 使, “envoy” drugs,“ to “induce or carry through the mission of the principle” [drugs].

See the discussion in Frank Liu and Liu Yan Mau, Chinese Medical Terminology (Hong Kong, 1980), 161.

¹²⁶See the discussion in Unschuld, 1985: 179ff.

¹²⁷Tarbaqa[n]: the large Mongolian marmot was an important meat and fur source in former times. Like the Central Asian ground squirrels (it is itself only a large ground squirrel) it is a major vector for plague, since the flea Xenopsylla cheopis, which actually carries the plague from animal to animal or animal to human, is at home on this marmot. In the early twentieth century, major plague outbreaks were traced to marmot trappers who were often newcomers and did not know that one should avoid sick animals (Christopher Muench, personal communication to PDB).

¹²⁸See the entries on tarbaqan (“Snow Pig”) meat, oil, and bones in the Chung-yao ta tz’u-tien, vols. 1–3 (Hong Kong, 1979) (CYTTT), II, 2088–9.

¹²⁹If this name is not simply a variant of tarbaq[an] it could mean “Tibetan” Rodent. The problem is that M. bobak does not live in Tibet. However, the similar M. himalayana does, and this may be our “Tibetan” marmot.

¹³⁰The identity of this disease complex is uncertain. According to Li (Hu Szu-hui, 1988: 294), It is characterized by oozing sores, not unlike the buboes of plague. It may be an earlier, less virulent form of the plague, to which the Mongols were largely immune in any case. Perhaps the association of the tarbaqa[n] with black plague was known and the beast attributed magical, or real, powers to cure the sores produced by black plague, the “pheasant sores” of our text. For a recent survey of the Black Death see Colin McEvedy, “The bubonic plague,” Scientific American 258: 2: 118–23. On immunity and plague see also Stephen R. Ell, “Immunity as a factor in the epidemiology of Medieval plague, Reviews of Infectious Diseases 6: 6 (November–December, 1984): 866–79, and his “Plague and leprosy in the Middle Ages: a paradoxical cross-immunity,” International Journal of Leprosy and other Micobacterial Diseases 55: 2 (June, 1987): 345–50.

¹³¹See Unschuld, 1986.

¹³²The concept of pu 補, “supplementing, strengthening,” is the easiest Chinese category to understand in modern Western medical terms. Almost all easily digestible foods high in protein, vitamins and/or minerals are considered to have the desired effect of pu by the Chinese. Almost no other foods are, except for those made part of the system by extension, e.g., non-nourishing parts of otherwise nourishing animals. Sympathetic magic and folk belief also exert their influence. Brains, for example, supplement brains, and the like. Other specific claims are based on the system of correspondences. The supplementation theory is also found widely outside of China. In the Indian subcontinent, too, easily digestible protein foods are called “strengthening” and are fed to parturient women (Najma Rizvi, personal communication to ENA). The same general belief system prevails in southeast Asia as well.

¹³³Cheng Libin, “Are the so-called poisonous food-combinations really poisonous?,” Contributions from the Biological Laboratory the Science Society of China, Zoological Series II, 9 (1936): 307–16.

¹³⁴Unschuld, 1986: 216.

¹³⁵Sabban, 1986b: 167ff.

¹³⁶A recipe is given in the CCPYSL, 12, 63a:

Take tender ginger before the spring rains. The quantity does not matter. Remove the shoots and sprouts. Scour and wash. Use distilled liquor and pickling salts. Apply evenly. Put into a porcelain jar. Put a lump of sugar on top. Stop the opening with bamboo leaves. Seal with clay.

¹³⁷The technology and terminology of the YSCY’s bean flour noodles is frequently Near Eastern or Central Asian and in some cases, at least, bean flour is probably a substitution for semolina. Cook testing has shown, for example, that the CCPYSL’s recipe (13, 18b) for a proto-baklava works best if semolina is re-substituted for the bean flour called for in the recipe.

¹³⁸The Chinese radish was used outside China and Chinese chives were, of course, well known to the Mongols as a gathered and probably medicinal food and were among those wild plants gathered by Hö’elün in feeding her orphans.

¹³⁹Sabban, 1983, 1986b.

¹⁴⁰Unpublished letter of 7 June, 1993 to PDB.

¹⁴¹CCPYSL, 14, 40a–b:

Great Spice Combination for a Large (or Imperial) Kitchen (made by powdering the following and forming it into pellets with *chuqmin dissolved in water):

[Processed] Stinking Elm (Ulmus macrocarpa) pulp

lesser galangal (Alpinia officinarum)

long pepper (Piper longum)

greater galangal (Alpinia galanga)

grains-of-paradise (Amomum villosum and A. xanthioides)

Szu-ch’uan pepper (Zanthoxylum simulans and Z. bungeanum)

dried ginger

roasted cinnamon

zhira (shih-lo, Persian “cumin”)

fennel

Mandarin orange peel (peel of Citrus reticulata)

apricot kernel (Prunus arrneitiaca)

Quick Spice Combination for Flavoring (made by finely pounding the following and forming into small “pills” with water):

makdunis (ma-ch’in) 馬芹, “Muslim celery,” i.e., parsley)

black pepper

fennel

dried ginger

cinnamon

Szu-ch’uan pepper

On possible Middle Eastern influences see also Buell, 1999.

¹⁴²Sabban, 1986b: 181 f.

¹⁴³See O. Redon, F. Sabban, S. Sewenti, La gastronornie au Moyen Age, 150 recettes de France et d’Italie (Paris, 1991), 333.

¹⁴⁴Of course sources of fresh water in Mongolia were, in the fourteenth century at least, considerably less polluted than equivalent sources in China, due not only to the smaller population and smaller resulting pressures on such waters, but also to Mongol religious prohibitions intended to prevent any offense to the “lords of the land and waters,” above all through pollution or misuse of any natural environmental resources, including all sources of fresh water. On this see Roux, 1984: 132ff.

¹⁴⁵Sabban: 1986b: 182–3.

¹⁴⁶See in particular Pierre Bourdieu, 1979 and Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine and Class (Cambridge, 1982).

¹⁴⁷See Goody, 1982.

¹⁴⁸See, for example, Claude Levi-Strauss, La Pensée sauvage (Paris, 1962).

¹⁴⁹See Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols (London, 1970) and her Implicit Meanings (London, 1975).

¹⁵⁰See Angela Longue, The Psychology of Eating and Drinking (San Francisco, 1986).

¹⁵¹See Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference (Englewood Cliffs, 1980).

¹⁵²Sabban, 1986b: 180.

¹⁵³See Heine, 1988: 65ff on the preparation of meat in the medieval Arabic cookbook tradition.

¹⁵⁴See Krishna Prasad Dar, Kashmiri Cooking (New Delhi, 1977).