Mongol Melting PotA newly published book in the Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series provides a fascinating insight into the interwoven worlds of cooking and medicine in the Mongol empire. Paul D Buell - an independent scholar and writer living in Seattle, Washington, USA - explains. |
Fierce warriors and conquerors, the Mongols are better known for empire building than for contributions to cultural history. But they had a significant impact, thanks to the cultural exchanges their rule ushered in.
Since the 1240s and possibly earlier, and for several hundred years thereafter, intrepid explorers could travel from one end of Eurasia to the other largely unimpeded, thanks to the Pax Mongolica. This freedom to travel resulted in a flood of information about exotic new worlds whose existence had barely been suspected before the Mongols. Europeans soon possessed abundant new information not only about the Mongols themselves, but also about China and other exotic locations, described in detail by Marco Polo, the most famous European medieval traveller. His account not only stimulated the European imagination of his day, but later served as inspiration for the great voyages of discovery of early modern times, undertaken to re-establish contacts lost when Mongol empires fell. As well as information, cultural goods also travelled across Mongol territory. Gunpowder, a Chinese invention, probably made its way to Europe with Mongol help, and printing may have done the same. East Asian influences have even been claimed on Renaissance painting through Mongol Iran. Going in the opposite direction was Islamic medicine, as witnessed by the Hui-hui yao-fang, 'Muslim Medicinal Recipes', Chinese adaptations of Persian-language texts.
Eugene N Andersen, Charles Perry and I recently completed a book entitled A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as seen in Hu Szu-hui's Yin-shan cheng-yao (see Book details below), which attempts to trace these and other influences. Its focus is culinary, but also medical, since the text's culinary lore is strictly subordinated to its medical. It is a fully introduced and annotated translation of an official dietary manual, presented to the Mongol court in China in 1330, which went on to become the most important text of its kind in China.
Although based on the latest Chinese medical theory, the Yin-shan cheng-yao - ‘proper and essential things for the Emperor's food and drink' - actually includes lore and recipes from one end of Eurasia to the other, making it an invaluable resource for studying long-range cultural influences. The new translation forms part of the Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series (see box below).
The book not only reveals a strong substratum of Mongol tradition in imperial Mongol foods, and probably also in the dietary medicine of the era, but also pervasive Turkic and Iranian influences. While the most prominent court dish is a thick soup, a reflection of Mongolian tastes, the spicing and other refinements are anything but Mongolian, and show Turkic, Iranian, and possibly other cooks at work, as well as court dieticians of various persuasions anxious to improve the healths of their masters. The text includes recipes of purely Western extraction, principally from Iraq, and the terminology of the text’s noodle dishes suggests that Uighur and Persian were as important as Mongolian or Chinese as court languages. Clearly, the Mongol court in China was as much a part of a larger Eurasian context as it was of China.
In fact, a noteworthy feature of the Yin-shan cheng-yao is the degree to which it provides evidence of generalised culinary and other exchanges encouraged by Mongolian rule. Many court recipes appear, for example, in other sources intended for a popular Chinese audience, some even under Persian or Turkic names. The great soups forming the centrepiece of Mongol court cuisine were still popular in 16th-century India while some of the Turkic noodle dishes later became staples as far afield as Syria. In this connection, perhaps the Mongol era’s most famous contribution to world cuisine may be baklava. The name is Mongolian, and it is highly likely that these layered pastries made with thin dough sheets may have been the invention of some unknown Turkic or Persian cook serving the Mongols.
The new book strives to make its material as accessible as possible, particularly for readers whose specialty may not be Chinese medicine or the Mongols. In addition to a book-length introduction, and the translation, the entire Chinese text is provided. There are even cooking instructions for recipes, many of which - the Kashmiri curry, for example - are excellent. Bon appétit!
Book details
Paul D Buell and Eugene N Andersen, with an appendix by Charles Perry. A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as seen in Hu Szu-hui’s Yin-shan cheng-yao. The Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 2000.
See also
- Wellcome History: Book review of A Soup for the Qan. Download and view the pdf of issue 15.
External links
- A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as seen in Hu Szu-hui’s Yin-shan cheng-yao. Search for book details at Kegan Paul International.