Praecepta ex horto plenitudinis

Praecepta ex horto plenitudinis (titulo Sinico 隨園食單, pinyin Suíyuán Shídān) est liber de arte coquinaria anno 1796 a poëta Yuan Mei divulgatus qui propter studia gastronomica "Brillat-Savarin Sinarum" (China's Brillat-Savarin) nuncupatus,^[1] "inter principales coquinariarum artium Jiangnanensium fautores"^[2] et unus e quattuor magnis ganeonibus Sinis (cum Su Shi, Ni Zan, Xu Wei) celebratur.^[3]

Praecepta magna parte a cenis coquisque amicorum vicinorum per quadraginta annos se collegisse confitetur: post cenam apud vicinum, qua placebatur, coquum suum in coquinam hospitis misisse ut praecepta et methodum didicisset: se postea praecepta ordinavisse, nominibus hospitum saporibusque semper notis ut gratias hoc modo agam et ad usum posteriorum: praecepta scripta contra artem viventem coqui pauca valere: quamvis res coquinariae triviales sint, se quod dicere voluerit sine haesitatione e corde dixisse.^[4]

Ferculorum optimorum sunt quae simplicissime parantur: "Dum Quantuniam peragrabam iuscellum ex oryza anguillaque incredibiliter saporosum sumpsi. Mihi de secreto modo ferculi tam consummati faciendi quaerendo "Anguilla" responsum est "te postulante mactata, cocta, nulla mora tibi inlata est. Sine pluribus."^[5] Cenae lautissimae modestis convivis interdum non satisfaciunt: "Olim apud mercatorem aliquem cenavi. Tres mensae, tragemata sedecim, summatim quadraginta fere fercula nobis inlata sunt. Hospes hanc cenam felicissimam fuisse aestimavit. Ego domum reditus candgie mandavi ut famem devincam: tales epulae, cibis abundantibus, parum nutriunt."^[6]

Sunt etiam cibi qui non propter facultatem nutritivam sed ut admirationem evocent inferuntur: "Pullinam porcinamque piscemque anatinamque saepe ego nobilitatem ciborum nuncupavi. Quaeque suo sapore redolet. Cibi autem sicut holothuria^(en) et nidi aerodramorum ad plebem vulgarem et spernendam cognati sunt cui bonus successus auxilio et virtute aliorum efficitur."^[7] Coquo autem saporem bonitatemque ciborum singillatim exponere oportet: "Nonnulli coqui hodierni pullinam anatinam porcinam anserinam commixtas iure decoquentes fercula producuntur quorum gustus tam sapororus erit quam cera masticata. Timeo ne animi illarum gallinarum porcorum anserum anatum, talia crimina in coquinis huius mundi observantes, iustitiam apud inferorum curias postularent."^[8]

Divisiones operis

Praefatio (序)
Scienda (須知單): 20 capituli
Evitanda (戒單): 14 capituli
Cibus marinus (海鮮單}): 9 capituli
Deliciae fluviales (江鮮單): 9 capituli
Caro victimarum (i.e. porcina: 特牲單): 43 capituli
Carnes variae (雜牲單): 16 capituli
Pullina (羽族單): 56 capituli
Pisces squamei (水族有鱗單): 17 capituli
Pisces sine squamis (水族無鱗單): 28 capituli
Holeracea (雜素菜單): 47 capituli
Paropsides (小菜單): 41 capituli
Aperitiva et dim sum (點心單): 55 capituli
Oryza et congee (飯粥單): 2 capituli
Thea et vinum (茶酒單): 16 capituli

Fortuna

Liber a criticis Anglice scribentibus sed scientiae gastronomicae diffidentibus saepe lectus atque pauco aestimatus est. "Liber praeceptorum laudes litterarias aegre meret", ait J. D. Schmidt, qui nihilominus placita de re cibaria eruditionemque auctoris se admiravisse confitetur.^[9] A gastronomis hodiernis, artis rhetoricae expertibus, magis magisque laudatur tanquam "prima congeries ampla sapientiae cibariae Sinarum".^[10]

Apud popinam Longjing Cao Tang^(en) (龙井草堂) urbis Hanchei, a Dai Jianjun (戴建军) directam, fercula secundum placita gastronomica Yuan Mei aevo nostro creantur.^[1]

Notae

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Fuchsia Dunlop, "Letter from China: Garden of Contentment" in The New Yorker vol. 84 no. 38 (24 November 2008) pp. 54–61
↑ Dunlop (2016) p. 21
↑ Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual (Cantabrigiae Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) p. 634
↑ Whenever I have eaten well and been inspired by a meal I have had at someone else's place I would later send my chef to them to write down the recipes for the dishes and the techniques used in their preparation. In this manner, over the last forty years, I have managed to compile and assemble recipes ... I have always noted the dishes' flavours and the houses they came from [in] gratitude for their generosity and for the sake of posterity ... Of course, static written recipes cannot match the full expression of a living chef ... There is no need to exert oneself in trying to distill complete bodies of knowledge from old yellowing texts ... Although matters of food and drink can be considered somewhat trivial, I have earnestly said all that I wish to say from my heart: versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) pp. 4-7
↑ While traveling in Guangdong province, I had an incredibly good rice-eel soup ... When I inquired on the secret of making a dish so perfect, I was told: "The eel was killed and cooked to your order and served the moment it is done without delay. That is all": versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) editio praeliminaris
↑ I once dined with a merchant. There were three separate courses and sixteen appetisers [sweets secundum Waley]. Altogether, almost forty dishes were served. My host regarded the pompous dinner as an enormous success. I left it hungry and had to prepare congee at home to quell my hunger. Such banquets, while abundant with food, are both vulgar and unwholesome: versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) p. 55; cf. Waley (1956) pp. 195-196
↑ I have often referred to chicken, pork, fish and duck as the talented nobility of food ingredients, each with a flavour of its own, and they hold a dish together with their own merits and ensure its success. Ingredients such as sea cucumber and bird's nest, on the other hand, are more akin to those vulgar and despicable individuals ... reliant on the support and merits of others to succeed: versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) p. 51
↑ These days we see flamboyant chefs boiling chickens, ducks, pigs and geese together in soup, producing dishes with tastes indistinguishable from, and as flavorful as, chewing on wax. I fear the souls of the chickens, pigs, geese and ducks, seeing such wrongs done, will be demanding justice from the courts in the afterlife: Chen, ed. (2018) p. 29
↑ The Recipe Book does not possess a particularly high literary merit, but Yuan Mei's general comments about food make fascinating reading, and the book as a whole attests to his broad interests and learning: Jerry Dean Schmidt, Harmony Garden: The Life, Literary Criticism, and Poetry of Yuan Mei (1716-1798) (Londinii: Routledge Curzon, 2003) p. 120; cf. Waley (1956) p. 195
↑ ... the first great gathering of Chinese culinary knowledge ... sparkles with Yuan's irascible charm, his epic passion for food, and his near-religious devotion to the pleasures of the senses: Nicole Mones in Chen, ed. (2018) p. xx

Bibliographia

Versiones

1940 : Wolfram Eberhard, interpr., "Die chinesische Küche. Die Kochkunst des Herrn von Sui-Yüan" in Sinica vol. 15 (1940) pp. 190–228
2018 : Sean J. S. Chen, ed. et interpr., Recipes from the Garden of Contentment (Great Barrington Massachusettensium: Berkshire Publishing, 2018 (Sinice, Anglice) (Paginae selectae apud Google Books)
- editio praeliminaris interretialis
- Versio tantum, titulo The Way of Eating, anno 2019 reimpressa (Anglice) (Paginae selectae apud Google Books)

Eruditio

Chou San-Chih, "[The Culinary Arts of Old China as seen from the 'Recipes from the Sui Garden']" (Sinice) in P'eng jen shih hua (1986) pp. 539-545
Fuchsia Dunlop, Land of Fish and Rice: Recipes from the Culinary Heart of China. Londinii: Bloomsbury, 2016. ISBN 978-1408802519
H. T. Huang, Science and Civilisation in China vol 6 fasc. 5: Fermentation and Food Science (Cantabrigiae: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 129-131
Lin Hsiang-Ju, Tsuifeng Lin, Chinese Gastronomy. Novi Eboraci: Hastings House, 1969
Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei, Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (Londinii: Allen & Unwin, 1956) pp. 195-197
Yan Liang, "A Recipe Book for Culture Consumers: Yuan Mei and Suiyuan shidan" in Frontiers of History in China vol. 10 no. 4 (2015)

[Dunlop_(2008)-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Fuchsia Dunlop, "Letter from China: Garden of Contentment" in The New Yorker vol. 84 no. 38 (24 November 2008) pp. 54–61

[2] Dunlop (2016) p. 21

[3] Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual (Cantabrigiae Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) p. 634

[4] Whenever I have eaten well and been inspired by a meal I have had at someone else's place I would later send my chef to them to write down the recipes for the dishes and the techniques used in their preparation. In this manner, over the last forty years, I have managed to compile and assemble recipes ... I have always noted the dishes' flavours and the houses they came from [in] gratitude for their generosity and for the sake of posterity ... Of course, static written recipes cannot match the full expression of a living chef ... There is no need to exert oneself in trying to distill complete bodies of knowledge from old yellowing texts ... Although matters of food and drink can be considered somewhat trivial, I have earnestly said all that I wish to say from my heart: versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) pp. 4-7

[5] While traveling in Guangdong province, I had an incredibly good rice-eel soup ... When I inquired on the secret of making a dish so perfect, I was told: "The eel was killed and cooked to your order and served the moment it is done without delay. That is all": versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) editio praeliminaris

[6] I once dined with a merchant. There were three separate courses and sixteen appetisers [sweets secundum Waley]. Altogether, almost forty dishes were served. My host regarded the pompous dinner as an enormous success. I left it hungry and had to prepare congee at home to quell my hunger. Such banquets, while abundant with food, are both vulgar and unwholesome: versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) p. 55; cf. Waley (1956) pp. 195-196

[7] I have often referred to chicken, pork, fish and duck as the talented nobility of food ingredients, each with a flavour of its own, and they hold a dish together with their own merits and ensure its success. Ingredients such as sea cucumber and bird's nest, on the other hand, are more akin to those vulgar and despicable individuals ... reliant on the support and merits of others to succeed: versio Anglica Chen, ed. (2018) p. 51

[8] These days we see flamboyant chefs boiling chickens, ducks, pigs and geese together in soup, producing dishes with tastes indistinguishable from, and as flavorful as, chewing on wax. I fear the souls of the chickens, pigs, geese and ducks, seeing such wrongs done, will be demanding justice from the courts in the afterlife: Chen, ed. (2018) p. 29

[Schmidt_(2003)-9] The Recipe Book does not possess a particularly high literary merit, but Yuan Mei's general comments about food make fascinating reading, and the book as a whole attests to his broad interests and learning: Jerry Dean Schmidt, Harmony Garden: The Life, Literary Criticism, and Poetry of Yuan Mei (1716-1798) (Londinii: Routledge Curzon, 2003) p. 120; cf. Waley (1956) p. 195

[10] ... the first great gathering of Chinese culinary knowledge ... sparkles with Yuan's irascible charm, his epic passion for food, and his near-religious devotion to the pleasures of the senses: Nicole Mones in Chen, ed. (2018) p. xx

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