THE FOOD OF PHILOSOPHERS AND EMPERORS

In 1330, a palace cook of the Yuan dynasty published a recipe for roast duck in his book, The Most Important Principles of Nutrition. By the time the Ming dynasty came to power in 1368, the ancient imperial capital of Nanjing was already famous for its duck dishes. It was reported that Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, ate one roast duck every day.

In 1421, the capital of the Ming Empire was moved to Peking as did the duck with the royal household. Since then, the dish that was once called ‘Nanjing duck’ became ‘Peking duck’.

To understand the significance of this complicated dish in Chinese cuisine, it is important to know that respect for food has been one of the hallmarks of Chinese culinary tradition since the most ancient times. Careful preparation, presentation, and consumption of dishes have always been considered worthy of wise men and rulers.

There was a special cauldron that was considered a symbol of state power. Philosopher Laozi compared ruling a country with the work of a chef preparing delicate dishes that demand patience and calmness:

‘Governing a big country is like cooking small fish. When the country is ruled by Dao, demons can neither disrupt it nor harm the people.’

According to legend, the chef Yi Yin (sixteenth century BCE) so astonished the founder of the Shang Yin Empire with his culinary skills that the latter made him the prime minister. Shu King, one of the books of the sacred five classics of China, contains chapters that are attributed to Yi Yin. In those chapters, the author compares the achievement of harmony within society with achieving a balance of different flavors in a cauldron and compares the leader of the state with a skilful chef.

Food preparation in China was treated like a branch of medicine, and its components were assessed in accordance with the benefit they had for the body. Food was also a bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead, and one could calm hungry spirits by offering them food in the seventh lunar month. Even today in China, the spirits are invited to share a meal with their descendants during New Year celebrations, and it is customary to leave them small plates of food in the main room of the house.

If, up until the twentieth century, European cuisine concentrated mainly on the harmony of the taste and smell of the prepared dish (plus splendor and ingenuity in presentation), Chinese chefs checked the quality of food guided by five parameters: taste, smell, color, texture, and cut. The kings of medieval Europe would have seemed extremely low maintenance to them. A dish being thought out, tradition-adhering, and aesthetically pleasing in appearance was more important than its taste. Confucius would refuse to eat a dish if it was not beautifully served or served with the wrong sauce. It was important to watch out for strong tastes to avoid one taste dominating over others—just like in state governance.

Peking duck is cooked in stages. First, one would need a suitable duck. Before it is slaughtered, the bird is overfed four times a day and not allowed to move for several weeks so that it begins to store fat. This way of feeding has not changed for hundreds of years. The bird needs to be gutted such that the bones or skin are not damaged or displaced. The chefs then pump air under the bird’s skin to separate it from the meat. After that, the bird is rubbed with honey or syrup and hung out to dry in the open air. After drying, the duck is roasted in a special oven using fruit tree logs as fuel. There are two main ways to prepare this dish, and the main difference between them is in the type of oven used to cook the bird—open or closed.

The duck is served whole and carved on the table into thin slices, and you can get approximately 90–120 slices per duck. Each slice must have some crispy skin on it. The meat is accompanied by thin mandarin pancakes and sweet sauces, such as soy sauce-based hoisin and sweet burdock sauce, sliced fresh cucumber and spring onion, and sometimes garlic purée. It is eaten with the hands, rolling the meat and vegetables into the pancake and dipping it into sauce (no more than once). At the end of the banquet, the guests are served a soup made of duck broth and Chinese cabbage, made with the remainder of the duck. On average one duck will serve four people. Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who ate one duck per day, was an extraordinary person in that respect at least.

Even from the description, it is easy to see that all five Chinese conditions are carefully adhered to. Roast duck has a beautiful smell, the texture is quite rich—from dry, crispy skin to juicy, fresh vegetables—and the color and taste are also quite diverse. The carving itself requires a lot of training, and only a real carving master would be allowed to serve high-ranking guests.

Peking duck is the ideal option for an authentic Chinese dinner. The dish doesn’t just provide nourishment but presents an opportunity to talk about it, appreciating the nuances of the taste and serving. Chinese food is one of the greatest joys of life and remains the most popular conversation topic to this day, a little bit like the weather in the UK and politics in the US.

‘Food can never be too clean, and meat can never be sliced too thin.’

The Analects, Confucius

Chinese culinary culture suffered significantly in the twentieth century. The communists looked down on fine dining, and there was a lack of ingredients, chefs and those who could appreciate their skill. Thus, the art of preparing complex dishes went swiftly downhill. The Great Chinese Famine of 1959–61 officially killed more than 15 million people and for about half a century, Peking duck was the last thing on people’s minds. The population of this breed of bird went into decline in China. As a result, today the main suppliers of Peking duck are farms in the UK and USA, which managed to buy the birds from China a long time before the Communist Revolution took place there. In 1873, twenty-five young Peking ducks were sent from Peking to New York. Although some were eaten during the voyage, at least half of them made it to the American shores and became the ancestors of the current American breed of Peking duck.

The 1980s saw the beginning of the economic boom in China. It happened alongside the opening of borders, increased flow of tourists to the country and the spread of Chinese culture to different parts of the world, which, in turn, increased the demand for Chinese food. The population of Peking ducks in the country was on the increase, although until very recently seven out of ten ducks served in Peking restaurants were grown either in the US or in the northeast of England on one of Lincolnshire’s farms.

Despite the high demand, the complexity of making Peking duck somewhat limits the popularity of this dish. According to a recent evaluation by the gastronomical site www.tastewise.io, Peking duck is served only in 0.5 per cent of restaurants around the world.

‘If you ask her what her favorite story is, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once. An English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student what the happiest moment in his life was. The student hesitated for a long time. At last, he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, so he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip and the eating of the duck.’

—Lidia Davis, ‘Happiest Moment’, in Samuel Johnson Is Indignant

Davis, Lidia. 2001. ‘Happiest Moment’ from Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: Stories.