13~14세기 카안의 부엌과 몽골 風味의 지속과 변화

The Kitchens of the Mongol Qa’an and Continuance and Transformation of Mongol Flavor in the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Centuries

This study examines culinary cosmopolitanism and strong continuation of Mongol flavor in the royal kitchens in the Mongol empire. This analysis reveals the Mongol elements of imperial culture. Food held a consequential status in the Qa’an’s daily life and banquets, called @@ōī in Türk. Food and feasts were so significant among the Mongols that they considered reveling as the starting point for state affairs. Thus, the Bureau for Imperial Household Provisions (宣徽院 Xuanhui yuan) under the Ministry of Rites (禮部 Li bu) was in charge of royal foods and banquets. In both Dadu 大都 (Beijing), the Winter Capital, and Shangdu 上都 (Dolon, Inner Mongolia), the Summer Capital, foods were prepared in the Rooms of Kingly Cuisine, the Pavilion of Kingly Cuisine, the Inner Kitchens, Kitchens, and the Cooks’ Rooms. Many kitchens in Dadu were stationed around the Palace of Raising Holiness (興聖宮 Xingsheng gong), the queens’ palace. Cooks prepared foods with eight recipes in small kitchens (小廚房 xiao chufang) while separately cooking lamb in the grand kitchens (大廚房 da chufang). Whenever the Qa’an travelled to Shangdu, which he did every summer, his mobile kitchens (行廚 xingchu) accompanied him. Ba’určis, or cooks in Mongolian, cooked foods and regularly plied the Qa’an with them. A ba’urči required the sovereign’s personal confidence and could be nominated as a high official. At the Qa’an’s table, a globalization of culinary culture was realized. The great Qa’ans consumed foods and drinks from Mongolia, “China,” Central Asia, West Asia, Southeast Asia and Koryŏ. They carefully scrutinized flavors and properties of foods inside and outside the empire. A meat diet was the Qa’an’s prerogative. He emphasized Mongolian sheep, gazelles, airaq (mare’s milk), wine, tea and water, among other things. Indeed, a Mongol always carried a small knife, not only for dignity and self-protection but also for eating, such was the influence of their meat culture. The Mongols’ high-calorie meat diet was complimented by the sour taste of tarag, or yogurt, in Mongolian. Their daily intake of milk products was beneficial to labor economization, since they rarely cooked food at dawn. The Mongols preferred drinking mare’s milk and wine, and particularly relished wine as a drink of festivity. Given this inclination to drink airaq and wine, they probably did not demand much grain for brewing, in contrast to the claims of previous scholarship. The Mongols regarded sheep, gazelles, and tarbaqa (marmots) from the Mongol steppe, together with milk beverage, as forming culinary harmony, notwithstanding the cosmopolitanism of their royal food culture. This proves that the appetite of the Qa’an remained firmly grounded in Mongol flavors. His preference for steppe food, however, did not exclude a variety of other tastes. In brief, ba’určis from the royal kitchens regularly served both Mongolian and alien foods at the Qa’an’s table, thanks to the Mongol court’s tenacious continuation of the nomadic palette, and despite the new internationalization of food culture that their empire had encouraged. In particular, the court’s mobile kitchens were at the center of harmonizing Mongolian flavors with exotic tastes.