Food, Cooking and Drink in Yuan China: Court Diets and Regional Foodways

Food in Yuan China drew on regional farming, urban markets and the Mongol court’s connections across Asia. Wheat and other dryland grains were important in the north; rice was prominent in the south. Local vegetables, fish, meat and preserved foods supplemented these staples. Court recipes brought further ingredients and techniques into an elaborate setting, while household manuals recorded work closer to provisioning a home.

Grains required processing before they became meals. Milling turned wheat into flour for dough; husking and pounding prepared grain for boiling. Water softened rice or millet into cooked grain or porridge, while flour mixed into dough could be cut into noodles or made into wrappers. These basic operations gave the same staple different textures and made processing equipment part of the food supply.

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A court diet shaped by administration and exchange

Hu Sihui served as a dietitian at the Yuan court, with responsibility for planning food for the emperor and members of the imperial family. He was appointed sometime between 1314 and 1320 and worked within the Xuanhui Yuan, an office concerned with court supplies and provisions. For Hu, diet was more than a matter of taste: he argued that the health of the ruler, and therefore the ruler’s ability to govern, depended in part on those preparing his food.

In 1330 Hu presented the court with the Yinshan zhengyao , a work combining recipes and dietary medicine. Its three sections range from advice about food and drinking to recipes, descriptions of ingredients, and claims about their effects on health. The original Yuan manuscript is lost; the surviving editions are based on a Ming edition printed in 1456.

The court manual uses Mongol, Turkic, Persian and Arabic food terms alongside Chinese dietary learning. Its ingredients and techniques reflect movement across the Mongol world, but their combinations matter more than a list of foreign names. Mutton could be cooked with flour foods or chickpeas, joining a meat broth with starch or pulses to make a more substantial dish.

Household provisioning and preserved foods

A different kind of book, the Jujia biyong, or Necessary Knowledge for Family Use, was commercially printed at Jianyang during the Yuan. It assembled practical household knowledge rather than planning an emperor’s diet. Its food chapters covered sauces, vinegar, fermented beans, vegetables, preserved meat and fish, noodle and bread foods, dairy products and preparations identified with Muslim or Jurchen communities.

Preservation extended what a household could do with seasonal supplies. Salt drew moisture from foods and created conditions less favourable to spoilage; drying reduced their water content. Fermentation transformed grains and beans into drinks, sauces and seasonings. Such work took time, containers and storage space, but could make a harvest or purchase useful well beyond the day it arrived in the kitchen. Household recipe collections treated these tasks alongside the preparation of a meal.

Ingredients and the range of recipes

The Yinshan zhengyao organizes food broadly, covering grains, meats, poultry, fish and other sea creatures, fruit, vegetables, and seasonings. Its final section lists the supposed medicinal properties of ingredients, including 46 vegetables, 39 fruits, 35 kinds of meat, 28 sea creatures, and 20 kinds of poultry.

The first section contains 95 recipes under a heading translated as Strange Delicacies of Combined Flavours, including many mutton preparations. Its opening mastic soup gives a clear example. Chickpeas were boiled, skinned and crushed, then cooked with mutton and aromatics. The broth was strained and further cooked beans added. Crushing part of the pulses thickened the liquid, while whole beans gave it a different texture. The recipe joined the flavour of meat and spices with a technique familiar in West Asian cooking.

Cooking and dietary theory were closely linked. Hu arranged recipes with claims about the properties of ingredients and their effects on the body. Choosing a food therefore involved taste, texture and a medical interpretation of warmth, coldness or bodily balance. These historical theories explain why the manual placed preparations and health advice together.

Drinks and dietary advice

The book’s second section contains 57 recipes for hot beverages and concentrated or liquid foods, followed by a discussion of different kinds of water, from rainwater to spring water. Elsewhere it addresses precautions concerning liquor. Together, these subjects show that the court’s dietary concerns extended from dishes to drinks and water quality.

Fermented grain drinks supplied alcohol, while tea and other beverages had their own preparations and serving vessels. Boiling, steeping, straining and mixing changed the strength and texture of a drink, just as they did for soup. Hu’s attention to water and concentrated liquids placed these practical choices within the dietitian’s concern for the ruler’s food and health.

For the wider setting, see Food, Clothing and Urban Recreation in Yuan China (1271–1368).