76 RESEARCH FRANÇOISE SABBAN_ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES, PARIS
Starting from that era, some classic texts as
Recipes, Medicine
and Gastronomy
in Ancient China
The French expression recette de cuisine
(kitchen recipe) refers to two fields which
are not independent but which must be
considered separately. The first indicates
the knowledge of procedures and
ingredients needed to make a particular
dish. The second is the recording of this
knowledge in a special style and syntax.
According to the latter, the recipe is the
subject matter of gastronomic treatises -
usually collections of recipes - as part of the
so-called fachliteratur, or “scientific
literature,” which includes cookbooks and
texts listing the formulas typical of some
arts like medicine, pharmaceutics, dietetics
and of course gastronomy.(1) All these texts
share a prescriptive approach, aimed at
introducing the reader to an activity for
which special ingredients, procedures and
techniques are needed to put together a
curative or gastronomic preparation (Sabban
1989, 79-82).
According to the scholars who studied some
Sumer texts dating back to the third
millennium BC (Goody and Kramer), it
would appear that the first written recipes
were in fact for prescriptions rather than
culinary dishes.
Similar examples can be found in ancient
The word fang refers to
direct knowledge which can be transferred
from master to apprentice
China, the only difference being that the
earliest medical prescriptions, discovered
in 1973 in a princely tomb at Mawangdui
in Central China (Harper 1998), are more
recent, dating from the second century BC.
well as the first Chinese bibliographic
treatise (first century BC) contain some
written evidence classified as fangji, a
compound word made up of the morphemes
fang, “recipe” and ji, “technique.” In ancient
times, the term fangji referred to medical
science and the doctor’s qualifications
(Harper 1982, 52-55). A skilled practitioner,
in fact, had to master the formulas of the
yaofang pharmacopoeia (that of basic
recipes) as well as healing techniques.
These formulas allowed him to make
preparations with therapeutic properties.
Thus, in the texts of the Han dynasty (206
BC - AD 220), the word fang - a polysemic
one in classic Chinese - refers specifically
to a written pharmacy prescription,
through which direct knowledge can be
first acquired and then transferred from
master to apprentice.
Donald J. Harper, who translated several
medical texts discovered during the
Mawangdui excavations, insists on the
meaning of this word as not referring to a
process or technique but to “written
matter.”(2) Precisely because of its
meaning, each recipe stands as an element
on its own, with an individual, clear-cut
graphic image that separates it from the
following one. This is what Harper
establishes about one of the treatises he
studied, written on silk, a precious material
which does not allow corrections nor waste
in the writing area.
In the collection of recipes he translated for
his PhD, each new paragraph indicates a
new prescription, even a short one, so as to
underline the unambiguous separation
between one formula and the next. After all,
we know that the material nature of these
recipes allowed them to be transferred,
gathered in collections and sold.
In many writings of the Han era or earlier,
the word fang itself also refers to a
wooden plate similar to that used by
archivists to write short texts of less than

a hundred characters. A different material
was employed for longer texts, namely
bamboo strips tied together by strings,
which could be used for individual texts
as well as volumes.
The archaeological digs that have been
held in China for the past three decades
have unearthed several significant
written works in the classic Chinese
tradition, including several collections of
medical formulas and prescriptions. For
the latter, nobody could explain why
sometimes the bamboo strips had not
been perforated for the string fastenings.
A fascinating theory that is generally
shared among scholars is that the leaves
could be used separately, each one
consisting of one recipe only (Harper
1982, 55-56). The loose-leaf format made
transportation and use easier.
Nevertheless, though the special format of
the prescription could have made its
circulation easier, this does not necessarily
mean that there was widespread interest.
Harper insists on this second peculiarity of
the fang recipe, which is also supported by
the medical prescriptions unearthed in
Sumer (Goody) and by those of the classic
Mediterranean civilizations. At that time it
was believed that the formulas contained a
secret, and that therefore they ought not to
be circulated except among a small group of
initiates. Harper also explains how the
doctors of the Han dynasty were often
considered as thaumaturges with
mysterious powers and esoteric knowledge,
like sorcerers.(3)
As far as structure is concerned, the recipes
of the Mawangdui silk manuscripts
perfectly correspond to the prescription
genre, since they often specify the
ingredients and dosage (Sabban 1989).
Precisely because of their therapeutic aim,
they occasionally contain indications and
posology.
The prescriptions translated by Harper can
be dated back at least to the second century
RESEARCH 77
BC,as the tomb the texts were found in was
sealed in 168 BC.(4) Graphically the silk-
band recipes remind us of a fang text,
separated as they are one from the other,
and thus considered as individual elements.
Fang recipes written on bamboo strips
dating to the same period were also
unearthed.(5)
The practice of preparing medical potions
can often be compared with kitchen practices
Recently, several hundred damaged
inscribed bamboo strips were discovered in
the Hunan province in a tomb dating to
162 BC. Some of these apparently contain
grain- and meat-based recipes. However,
data currently available on fully
transcribed texts are still too fragmentary
and incomplete to allow them to be
recognized as kitchen recipes. In fact, the
transformation by cooking of edible
ingredients can also refer to pharmaceutical
preparations typical of the Yin Yang dietary
tradition. This might apply to the specific
case, as the remains had been unearthed
with other texts that can be referred to this
particular food tradition.(6) The practice of
preparing medical potions can often be
compared with kitchen practices, as both
use elements and tools typical of cooking,
like fire and earthenware.
For the time being, no kitchen treatises
have been discovered in the many
excavations started in China as early as the
1970s, whereas apart from medical texts a
large quantity of written evidence has been
unearthed, including the first versions of
classic texts, the decoding of which has
completely revolutionized the history of the
Chinese writing tradition.
Yet a collection of over 300 wooden plates
was unearthed, identifying the objects in
one of the tombs at the Mawangdui burial
site. Some of them indicate the names of
foods, the remains of which have been also
78 RESEARCH FRANÇOISE SABBAN_ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES, PARIS
found at the site (Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens 83-
107). These are by no means recipes,
however, and what is more, archaeologists
have had many problems in identifying the
dishes, as neither their preparations nor
the specific ingredients can be guessed just
from their names. As in the case of the
Mawangdui site, where food remains and
writings proving their very existence were
found, in the Chinese classic texts many
entries and information can be found
about food, dietary practices and even
about some dishes.(7)
In spite of these texts being very accurate,
they do not belong in the recipe genre, since
they describe rather than prescribe. The
issue is thus raised of how to determine
when kitchen recipes started to appear in
written documents and in which form.
The earliest Chinese cooking recipes we
know are fairly recent, being almost
contemporary to those found in Apicius’s
treatise, dating just one century later.
The Chinese recipes make up
approximately one quarter of the renowned
farming and home economics treatise
Qimin yaoshu, written by agronomist Jia
Sixie between AD 530 and 540.(8) Contrary
to the texts unearthed during the digs,
In classic Chinese, fang and fa are morphemes
meaning “technique” or “method”
which all belonged to the medical, dietary
and pharmaceutical spheres, the cooking
recipes contained in the Qimin yaoshu
clearly refer to a different field of activity,
namely to preparations relating to the
farming environment. In fact they focus on
ways of transforming pulses, fruit, meat
and other farm produce for which Jia Sixie
was responsible through cooking or
preservation techniques. After all, as he
clearly explains in the foreword, his
responsibility includes all the operations
“from ploughing the land to producing
vinegars.” His book is not just a farming
treatise,(9) since in it he provides
information on malting, sausage and
cheese making, brewing, preservation, etc.
The only purpose of the recipes for food
preparations in his treatise is to use the
produce of a large estate for self-
sufficiency. But the strictly culinary recipes
- the ones that explain how to cook dishes
meant for immediate rather than future
consumption - open the way to the Chinese
gastronomic tradition. Except for a few
simple family recipes included to provide
information about the cultivation of a
particular type of legume or the rearing of
an animal, the bulk of the recipes in the
Qimin yaoshu testifies to the existence of a
gastronomic system specific to the upper
classes of the time.(10) In fact, the author’s
interest in diet has nothing to do with
either medicine or food.
Jia Sixie considers food merely as
livelihood and is not at all interested in the
potential healing qualities of the dishes for
which he provides the recipes. The
question then arises: Could the link shown
in the West between medicine and diet in
the word recipe(11) be represented in
ancient China by the shared word fang, in
the Qimin yaoshu?
Jia Sixie efficiently uses the word fang when
referring to some recipes, but generally he
opts for the word fa.(12) After all, Jia Sixie’s
recipes are dealt with very differently in his
treatise. The name of a dish often appears
on its own, with no indication of either the
word fang or fa. And when either one is
included, it comes after the recipe’s title,
which in turn is preceded by a verb
meaning “do,” thus obtaining a sequence
which could be translated as “recipe to make
this or that dish.” In classic Chinese, fang
and fa are generally morphemes meaning
“technique” or “method.” However they are
used in etymological dictionaries for
different spheres of activity. In a context

like pharmacopeia or medicine, fang refers
to a prescription or compound, whereas
one of the many meanings of fa refers to
the processes or methods as a whole, and
can be applied to any sector, including
gastronomy.(13)
It is therefore surprising that the author of
the Qimin yaoshu used the word fang in the
title of some of the recipes. A possible
explanation could be that, as part of a
collection, some of the recipes were taken
from earlier texts to which different style
rules applied. And yet the fang recipes are
not indicated as taken from other texts, so it
cannot be assumed that Jia Sixie used the
two terms indiscriminately. In fact, only
seven out of the 290 recipes contained in
the treatise are qualified as fang, and
they all have characteristics typical of
prescriptions.
Even if the fang instructions included in
this text are in fact recipes, they are not
derived from kitchen practices as such, in
that they all refer to the preparation of
yeasts for the production of wine made
from grains or grapes. The peculiarity of
these texts is summed up by three things
that set them apart from kitchen recipes. To
begin with, the results obtained by
following the recipes are not necessarily
meant for direct consumption. Instead, as
in the case of yeasts, they are an essential
ingredient for the preparation of other
foods. And even when they are meant for
consumption, this can occur some time
after their preparation. In fact grain wines
require a short or long maturating period
before consumption. Secondly, they must
be made using very precise quantities of
ingredients in order to obtain a successful
outcome. Finally, they must be produced
under special conditions, the place and time
must be carefully chosen and at times
magical rites are also performed.
In other words, the preparations for
fermentation - difficult to keep under
control at all times - and the observance of
RESEARCH 79
codified practices, regulated on the basis
of very precise measurements, are very
similar to pharmaceutical preparations. If
one expects a potion to act on the illness it
is meant to cure, likewise one hopes the
yeast or wine production will succeed and
that the yeast will develop its full potential,
i.e. that it will start the fermentation
process.
There are no strictly culinary
recipes known earlier than Jia Sixie’s treatise
This kind of preparation is always
unpredictable and so everything possible
must be done to guarantee success. This is
why the specific preparations contained in
the Qimin yaoshu, like all those including a
fermentation process(14) come with a long
list of hygiene measures as well as
restrictions and proscriptions regarding
the layout of the premises and the
selection of the month, the day, the time
and even the agents to be used.(15) Some of
the recipes include the magical rites
required for invocations to the gods
requesting their intervention for the
success of the operation.
As we have seen, during the Han dynasty
the status of the doctor was defined by his
expertise in specific healing techniques and
his knowledge of the (secret) formulas of
the remedies. These two qualities were
complementary, meaning that just
mastering the formulas, albeit secret, was
not enough to define the doctor. He would
also have to know diagnostic techniques,
suggest the right treatments at the
appropriate moment, and sometimes resort
to occultism (Harper 1982, 67-106).
Jia Sixie has nothing in common with the
medical practitioners-shamans of the Han
dynasty. Rather, he was a pragmatic man
who refused to be influenced and restricted
by prohibitions. He agrees to follow the
high precepts of his predecessors, but also
80 RESEARCH FRANÇOISE SABBAN_ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES, PARIS
urges that judgment be appropriate for the
circumstances (Sabban 1996, 333-334).
As we mentioned before, only seven of the
recipes in Jia Sixie’s treatise are qualified as
fang, whereas for the most part those
referring to yeasts and wines are defined
by the name fa, and are considered by the
author as kitchen recipes. They simply
have a trickier and more complicated
preparation than the others.
Jia Sixie completely separates the
profession of cook from that of doctor. This
leads us to turn to the status granted to
kitchen recipes and to cooks themselves in
ancient China and during Jia Sixie’s times.
The authors of cookbooks were celebrated men of letters
and poets who amused themselves
by revealing how to prepare their favorite dishes
As already mentioned, there are no strictly
culinary recipes known earlier than Jia
Sixie’s treatise and this reveals the
distance between culinary practices and
intellectual activities.
Reference to cooks and experts in
gastronomy-related fields is however
present in the earliest literature, the only
difference between scribes and cooks being
in tone. The renowned butcher Ding
(Billeter 15-16), who could dismember an
ox with his eyes closed, is a perfect
example of the expertise of a highly
specialized professional. He is the
epitome of silent perfection and dexterity
which no written text could ever be able
to render.
Within the kitchen domain it is skill,
craftsmanship and ability that take priority
over the written text, which would be
unable to describe them suitably for lack of
vocabulary. Kitchen practices are not secret
activities, as in the case of doctors’ fang
recipes, whose quantities and mixtures,
unless meticulously measured out, can be
fatal and as such must be carefully
transmitted.
The ability and skills of a cook cannot be
judged by rote learning of a vast quantity
of written recipes. They must be
considered from a different viewpoint. A
cook’s sphere of action should not be
compared to a doctor’s, but rather with
that of the statesman, if we rely on Lü
Buwei’s work called Lüshi chunqiu. In the
chapter titled Benwei (original tastes) he
quotes an actual theory on cooking and
offers an account of the role of the cook.
Lü Buwei refers to the logic used by Yi
Yin, the future prime minister, who
instructed the future King Tang of the
Shang dynasty (14th-11th centuries BC)
on the art of government before Tang rose
to the rank of Child of Heaven. However
the text can be rather reminiscent of a
kitchen treatise. Yi Yin, who had once
worked as a cook, borrows the vocabulary
and concepts of gastronomy for his
description:
“There are three kinds of animals: those
that live in water and smell strongly of fish;
the carnivores that smell gamy; the
herbivores that smell of wool grease.
However, despite the extremely distasteful
smells, excellent dishes can be obtained
from all three types, as the right way of
cooking exists for each one of them. Water
is the origin of all flavors and thanks to the
five flavors and the three elements (water,
wood and fire), one can manage all cooking
styles and handle all transformations. A low
or high flame at the right moment can
remove in turn the smell of fish, game or
sheep fat. It all depends on the fire, and one
has to follow its rules. The right balance is
obtained uniting sweet, sour, bitter, spicy
and salty tastes which, when perfectly
combined and measured, come together to
form an elegant and measured harmony.
All transformations occurring in the brazier
are delicate and intangible and no words
 RESEARCH 81

could describe them, nor could one’s will production includes a collection of over
help decode them. They remind us of 300 recipes his cook had collected from
archery or the art of guiding a chariot, of other cooks in Yuan Mei’s friends’ houses,
the yin and yang metamorphoses, and the where he had enjoyed some delicious
cycle of seasons. They create dishes which meals. Even in today’s China cooking
are not ruined even if cooked at length; cannot be learnt from books, because
which are cooked but have not lost their experience and technical ability are
original shape; are sweet but not nauseating; essential qualities that come with practice
sour but not acid; salted but not brackish; (Sabban 1996, 174-175). Written recipes
spicy but not overpowering; delicate but are considered as expedients, indistinct
not insipid; juicy but not oily” (Knoblock and pale reflections of human experience.
and Riegel).
The lesson is clear: Just like the good
statesman, the good cook is engaged in his
trade supported by his talent and technical
skills. Thus both the statesman and the
cook will be able to combine the diverse
elements and the five tastes to obtain the
stability of good government or the perfect
balance of flavors.
Despite this theory that links the kitchen
and the government, emphasizing human
talent rather than the mere execution of
ready-made recipes, in ancient China the
instructions intended for government
officials, like gastronomic treatises, were a
key literary genre. In some cases, the
authors of cookbooks were celebrated men
of letters and poets who amused
themselves by revealing how to prepare
their favorite dishes, and praising the
pleasure they brought. However, these
authors considered this kind of literature a
distraction, a pleasant diversion, not to be
taken seriously. That is why the styles of
Chinese recipe books change depending on
each author’s personality. They include the
very rigorous Hu Sihui, a 14th-century
imperial dietician whose collection
includes approximately 40 gastronomic
recipes (Sabban 1986, 161-196); the
lyricism of Su Shi, a poet of the Song
dynasty who contributed the renowned
recipe for “Su Dong Po wild boar”; the
rather solemn Yuan Mei, one of the
greatest poets and humanists in 18th-
century China, whose vast literary
82 RESEARCH FRANÇOISE SABBAN_ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES, PARIS

Notes 9) Three-quarters of the work are dedicated to

1) The list ought to also include the treatises the cultivation methods and crop production of
concerning professions for which mastering Jia Sixie’s estate.
preparations or products was required, like
dying fabrics. 10) Sabban unpublished.

2) “Fang denotes a document in which a technique 11) The entry for “recipe” in the Trésor de la
is recorded. It refers to the technique as a Langue Française indicates that in the 13th
written material, a self-contained recipe.” century the word refers to the composition of a
Harper 1982, 54. remedy, and it was only later that it was used
in the culinary field, gaining its current
3) “The possessor of recipes, whether physician meaning as the procedure, method and also a
or thaumaturge, was endowed with skills written text relating to a culinary method.
unknown to ordinary people. …the truly
marvelous recipes were simply to be had by
12) Today the word fangfa is used to refer to a
the highest bidder. Such recipes were regarded
method or procedure, composed of the two
as secrets which should only be revealed to the
morphemes fang and fa.
right people.” Harper 1982, 58. Harper believes
that most of the recipes contained in the
13) These two words are by no means the only
treatises he translated are magic formulas.
ones used to indicate fachliteratur. Half-a-
dozen words used in titles of works which, in
4) According to Harper 1982 (2) their contents
a specific gastronomic context, indicate both
date them to the third century BC.
the recipes themselves and cooking treatises,
collections or abridged editions of recipe
5) See the interesting paper by Vivienne Lo (in
books are listed in bibliographies. Cf. Tao
International Academic Conference on the
Zhengang et al., Zhongguo pengren wenxian
Changcha Bamboo Documents Dating to Wu of
tiyao, Pékin, Zhongguo shangye chubanshe,
the Three Kingdom: To Celebrate One Hundred
1986.
Years of New Discoveries and Research into
Bamboo Strips and Silk Manuscripts, 15th-19th
August 2001). Cf. also Wenwu, 5, 2001 (95) and 14) Recipes can fail if the time reference is wrong, as
Murakami. some cannot be prepared throughout the year.

6) Vivienne Lo, op. cit. p. 2. 15) For yeast production, for instance, one can
require that only baby boys prepare it,
7) Particularly in ritual texts, and especially in provided they are clean.
the Li Ji, where seasonal foods are described
to the sovereign and his family, as well as
several dishes.

8) Qimin yaoshu had been composed within the

environmental context of northern China and
is the oldest complete farming text. Even if
earlier works are known, they have all
disappeared, with only fragmentary evidence
of them in the Qimin yaoshu.
 RESEARCH 83

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Billeter, Jean-François. Leçons sur Tchouang-
tseu. Paris: Éditions Allia, 2006.
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Qimin yaoshu déchiffré dans son sommaire."
Unpublished.

Goody, Jack. Domestication of the Savage Mind.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
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Harper, Donald J. Early Chinese Medical

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Harper, Donald J. The Wu shih erh ping fang

translation and Prolegomena. Thesis. Berkeley
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Knoblock, John and Jeffrey Riegel (transl.).

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Kramer, Samuel Noah. From the Tablets of

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