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Recipes From the Garden Of Contentmentby: Yuan Mei
Great Barrington MA:
Berkshire Publishing House 2019, Hardbound
ISBN: 978-161-472850
Reviewed by: Jacqueline M. Newman
Summer Volume: 2019 Issue: 26(2) page(s): 25
Yuan Mei’s Manual
of Gastronomy
in Chinese called
Suiyuan Shidan.
This outstanding
work, often referred
to but rarely
available except in
Chinese, is its first
bilingual edition.
Edited by EN Anderson and J Riegal, translated from the
original by Sean JS Chen with annotations, this volume
begins with a five-page Foreword by Nicole Mones and
includes details of when it was written.
Ten praises before its ten-page recipe-list is in the Table
of Contents in order, more than three hundred items
in three hundred and thirty-nine pages grouped as
Essential Knowledge, Objectionables, Ocean Delicacies,
Two Ways of Preparing, River Delicacies, Sacrificial
Animals (Pork), Assorted Livestock, Winged Tribe
(Birds), Water Tribe: Scaled Aquatic Creatures, Water
Tribe: Scaleless Aquatic Creatures, Assorted Vegetable
Dishes, Side Dishes, Appetizers, Rice and Congee, Tea
and Jiu or Alcoholic Beverage sections. Recipes are not complete in modern ways as some have
no ingredient amounts, no small items either, making
them as Yuan Mei did, is not possible. The recipes are
after the above titled sections and before a sixteen-page
Biography, a b/w drawing of Yuan Mei, a sixteen
item Bibliography, fourteen other sections in a ‘Food in
China’ section, and sixteen about traditional culinary
and gastronomic treatises, and a seven-page two-column
Glossary, a four-page Index of Names, and
six more with a two-column Index of Ingredients and
Terms, some in great detail. The rear-cover supports this first bilingual edition of
one of the world’s most famous books by this late 18th
century poet, Yuan Mei. They are worth reading, item
by item, word by word, as are the original recipes, many
for exotic dishes that provide unique views of China’s
culinary culture in his day. The rear cover touting
three current luminaries, Darra Goldstein, Fuchsia
Dunlop. and Ken Hom share his original lyricism and
18th century food culture with lively scholarship and
unique perspectives about Chinese food. Do enjoy this
culinary delight. |
