Spoiler History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 484 Soybean Meal

"This thing...could it be bean curd?"

Lu Su flicked the penholder and said thoughtfully.

Seeing other people casting curious eyes over him, Lu Su explained seriously:

"I saw a thing called Douhua in Jiangdong. It is said that it was accidentally obtained by the King of Huainan when he asked for the golden elixir."

"This thing looks like yellow flocculation, tastes sour and fishy, ​​is not durable, and is complicated to make. It is mostly eaten by children."

This statement is completely consistent with what the light screen said. Listen to Lu Su's description of the tofu appearance, and then look at the tofu displayed on the light screen in later generations.

Its shape is like jade, tender and smooth, and its color is like gelatin without feeling greasy. No wonder it is said to be loved by literati!

Pang Tong also sighed slightly and said:

"Obviously it's just food, but it's called rotten. No wonder it's hard to be considered elegant."

The name alone doesn't quite fit.

Fazheng couldn't agree more, and tried to decide with Pang Tong what name would be more suitable for this thing.

Liu Bei looked at the title of the book written by the man who lost his country in the Northern Song Dynasty, and felt a little sad in his heart.

Although Zuo of the Han Dynasty inherited Han Dynasty and made Luoyang his capital, he still respected Chang'an, the capital of the previous Han Dynasty.

Therefore, from that time on, people at that time called Luoyang Tokyo and Chang'an Xijing.

When I was young, I studied in Tokyo, where I rode horses, fought dogs, and competed for clothes. Now I am in Xijing to govern the people. I wonder how much people there are in Tokyo, which was burned to the ground by Dong Zhuo?

Therefore, when looking at the "Tokyo Menghua Lu" and "Mengliang Lu" written by the people after the two Song Dynasties were overthrown, Liu Bei felt a little sad, and he also had some sympathy with their authors:

If possible, why would Liu Bei not want to live a mediocre life in Tokyo without worrying about the power of heaven and earth?

If there weren't so many disasters, Meng De would still be chased and beaten for peeking at beautiful women in Tokyo today. Yuan Benchu ​​would also laugh loudly but eventually get a hold of her.

Gongsun Bogui should have completed his studies and returned to Youzhou to lead white horses to guard the border. Liu Bei, who stayed in Tokyo until tired, might also lead his second and third brothers to Youzhou to expand the border...

Liu Bei was a little crazy for a while.

Kong Ming didn't speak, but his hands never stopped. The four steps of making tofu, which were said to be simple by his descendants, were carefully laid out on the paper.

Behind each operation step, Kong Ming is also trying to break down more simpler and more feasible steps from these four simple words.

Just like the simplest grinding and filtering of beans, are the beans poured into the grinding disc dry or wet? If the beans are wet, how long do they need to be soaked in water, etc.

Later generations said that depending on the paste used, the tofu will be very different.

However, according to Kong Ming's experience, these steps of making things are also consistent with the saying that "a slight difference can make a difference of a thousand miles". The difference in the first step alone may make the finished thing completely different.

Therefore, Kong Ming immediately pondered in his mind, who should be entrusted with the task of making tofu?

……

"Bianliang is really lost."

Zhao Kuangyin's dark face also showed an obvious look of fatigue.

If you haven’t figured out the connection between the exorbitant taxes and military expenses mentioned by the younger generations before, here you can see the demise of the two Song Dynasties, and the literati recorded and recalled the old capital.

Judging from its title, although I had a hunch earlier that the change from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty would probably involve moving the capital, but now that I saw the fixed capital Lin'an City with my own eyes, I still found it extremely difficult to accept it.

He was no stranger to this place. After all, the Qian family of Lin'an was the one who controlled the Wuyue Kingdom. Qian Liu was the military governor of the Tang Dynasty, but he successively claimed vassal status in the Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, and later Han Dynasties. He had ridiculed his predecessors when he was ambitious before, and only settled down to be a concubine. Unexpected results …

Zhao Kuangyin suddenly felt his face burning, and until now, when he recalled the sighs of the Southern Song Dynasty literati who had learned from the light curtain, he felt a little more enlightened, and his mood was extremely complicated:

"Sure enough... giving birth to a son should be like Sun Zhongmou..."

After all, the great emperor of Wu State had successively established his capitals in Jianye and Wuchang, both of which were cities near the river, and he still had the intention of moving northward.

As for Lin'an, it still takes 500 miles to cross the river from the north. This kind of character is far different from that of Sun Quan.

When the matter of moving the capital was involved, Zhao Guangyi automatically stopped his activities and focused on looking at the light curtain as if he was fully immersed in it.

Zhao Pu stood up and comforted softly:

"It seems that despite the national calamity, the people still miss the governance of the officials and the blessings of the Song Dynasty."

"If you fail, the guilt may lie in heaven, and it is beyond human control."

Although the calamity of Jiaozi and the crime of being a coward were both mentioned, at this time Zhao Kuangyin could only allow himself to believe this statement for the time being.

As for this tofu...

Zhao Kuangyin raised his finger and pointed, and casually ordered a servant:

"Send a copy of its preparation method to the imperial dining room. You can find someone skilled in grinding tofu among the people to improve it and add it to the New Year's Day dishes."

Although I have never eaten it, I thought that since "Meng Liang Lu" can describe tofu, there should be no shortage of folk methods. It should not be difficult to make it read the relevant records and make it, right?

[Looking at it from another perspective, in addition to the time factor, the Ming Dynasty was able to improve the technology tree of tofu, and more importantly, it was also because the farming technology that had been studied since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period had reached a preliminary level of perfection when the Ming Dynasty was brought to the Ming Dynasty.

In soybean cultivation, Qin and Han Dynasties realized the importance of fertilization.

During the Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, the invention of the iron-tooth rake made it easier for people to level the land, and the technology of crop mixing also began to appear during this period.

During the Tang and Song dynasties, the paddy and drought rotation in the south and the deep and fine plowing in the north had their own characteristics, which effectively increased the yield per mu of fields.

In the Yuan Dynasty, the ancestors first realized the importance of moisture conservation and began to learn to use the method of leveling the land to make the upper layer of soil dense to lock in water and nutrients in the lower layer.

In addition, although the ancients could not see or know the role of soybean rhizobia, they also discovered that the cultivation of soybeans can ensure the persistence of nutrients in the soil.

Increasing land fertility and improving the crop rotation system can be seen clearly without a microscope. Coupled with improvements in soybean planting technology, the soybean planting area has been expanding throughout the Ming Dynasty.

Since the mid-Ming Dynasty, the planting area of ​​soybeans has exceeded 20 million acres, with an annual output of more than 3 million tons, reaching a historical peak.

The yield of soybeans per acre has increased rapidly, and the technology for making tofu based on soybeans has also been improved. This food has officially entered thousands of households, and is eaten by princes and princes in Guizhou.

Soybean meal, the residue of making tofu, led the Ming Dynasty to reach a new peak in the traditional feudal empire.

Just as the Song Dynasty inherited the papermaking technology of the Tang Dynasty and carried it forward, people in the Tang and Song Dynasties had already discovered that they could use soybeans to extract oil, and whether it was oil extraction or soybean meal and bean dregs remaining in the process of making tofu, they were extremely high-quality livestock feed.

For Ming Dynasty, which had no shortage of soybeans, the greatest significance of this product was to make it easier for private people to raise horses.

Compared with the Han and Tang dynasties, the Ming Dynasty's horse administration did not have many new ideas. However, relying on the extremely cheap but nutritious soybean meal, the number of horses in the country in the mid-Ming Dynasty far exceeded that of the Han and Tang dynasties.

Although it is still unclear how many qualified war horses there were, for the Ming Dynasty, the rapid increase in soybean production indeed lowered the difficulty threshold of raising horses. 】

(End of this chapter)