Twelve Hours in Chang an

# Twelve Hours in Chang’an#The food of Tang Dynasty [Millennium Sesame Cake] Sesame Cake, a kind of imported snack spread for thousands of years. In the Book of Songs, "Ma" is mentioned, but not sesame, referring to ramie.
Sesame is an annual herb of the genus Sesame of the family Linnaceae. Carbonized sesame seeds were found in the archaeological sites of the Indian Valley (today’s Pakistan) about 5,000 years ago, indicating that wild sesame seeds had been cultivated artificially by ancient locals. Sesame seeds were widely used in religious ceremonies at that time. After that, sesame seeds spread from India to West Asia, Egypt, Africa, to East China, Japan, and south to Southeast Asia.
By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, sesame was introduced into the Central Plains, also known as "flax". Sesame was first introduced into China as a medicine or religious sacrificial spice. The Shennong Herbal Medicine Sutra compiled in the Eastern Han Dynasty recorded that "flax" could be "long-lasting but not old". It can be seen that it was regarded as a magical extraterritorial medicine at that time.
Hucai, according to the Eastern Han Dynasty Liu Xi’s Shi Ming, is a cake containing flax (sesame). "This cake is a Hu food, China’s effect, slightly changed." Jia Sixie summed up more than 20 kinds of cooking methods and techniques in the "Pie Method Chapter" of Qi Min Yao Shu. Among them, he wrote that Hu cakes were baked in the "Hu cakes oven". After making cakes with noodles, sesame seeds and oil (or no oil) were sprinkled on the surface of the cakes and then baked on the wall of the Hu cakes. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty records that "Lingdi, good pancakes, Beijing master all eat pancakes."
Until the Tang Dynasty, eating flax cake was still very popular. When Bai Juyi was promoted from Sima in Jiangzhou to Zhongzhou (now Zhongxian in Chongqing), he personally made flax cakes and sent them to Yang Jingzhi in Wanzhou (now Wanzhou District in Chongqing) at that time. He also attached a seven-word cliche of "Sending Hu Biao Yang Wanzhou" written by him: "Flax cake is like Kyoto, and the fragrance of crisp oil is fresh in the oven. Sending it to Ambassador Yang, who is hungry, seems to be in vain." It can be seen that this "crisp" baked sesame cake is a Beijing feature.
A small piece of sesame cake from the west to the east, from the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, until today, it is still fragrant and crisp. A living cultural relic carrying the cultural exchange between China and the West.# Understanding the Tang Dynasty#