Overview

Madame Wu's Handbook on Home-Cooking: The Song Dynasty Classic on Domestic Cuisine is the first Western language edition of the Wushi Zhongkuilu 吳氏中饋錄, one of the earliest Chinese works on home cooking and the only culinary work written by a Chinese woman from premodern China preserved in its entirety. This translation and annotation by Sean J. S. Chen of this enigmatic cookbook reveal details on the preparation and preservation of foods essential on household tables of Medieval China. It is a valuable snap-shot of Medieval Chinese gastronomy, documenting, among other things, the myriad of home fermentation techniques used in the Song dynasty household, the beginning of soy-sauce use in Chinese cuisine, and the prevalent consumption of Central Asian foods and sweets in Eastern China. The book includes forewords by academic reviewers Eugene N. Anderson and Miranda Brown, as well as preface and notes by the translator.

Full Product Details

9781777938727

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Sean Chen rounds out his careful and excellent translation with thorough, interesting notes that identify ingredients, explain terms, speculate on cooking and preparing methods, and indicate important culinary innovations and continuities. We have long needed a translation of this historically important work. We have thousands of translations of the philosophical classics, but almost no translations of ordinary works on the wants and needs of everyday life. Sean Chen is an adventurer into that little-studied literature."" By Eugene N. Anderson ""Sean Chen does a terrific job rendering this historical gem into English and providing the necessary historical context. His translation will be a must-read for students of Chinese gastronomy, historians, and undergraduates for generations to come. It provides a wealth of information about cross-cultural culinary exchanges in medieval China - and about the relationship between the cooking of Madame Wu's day and those of the present. And in this way, recovers a lost world of eating that continues to shape the meals of the present."" By Miranda Brown"

Author Information

Sean J.S. Chen is a scholar and writer passionate about the anthropology of food and eating. He has been interviewed or consulted by various media including: CNN Travel, National Geographic, NPR, and PBS among others. He was also a consultant and special guest for the award-winning PBS television series: Confucius was a Foodie. He is an Associate at the University of Michigan Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. Eugene N. Anderson is a professor of anthropology emeritus at the University of California, Riverside.Anderson received a B.A. in anthropology from Harvard College in 1962 and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. He taught at Riverside from 1966 to 2006, when he became emeritus. He has worked on cultural anthropology, cultural ecology, ethnobiology, and food and nutrition in China, Pacific Northwest, and the Yucatán (Yucatec Maya). Miranda Brown is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. As a cultural historian of China, her primary interests lie in recipes of all kinds: culinary and medical. She has published numerous articles on various aspects of Chinese medical, culinary, and cultural history in English and Chinese.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available