What are the dishes on the Emperor's menu?

There used to be a joke. When a beggar answered the question of what to do after becoming an emperor, he answered bluntly: After becoming an emperor, he ate white-flour steamed bread every day. This is a joke, but what does the emperor eat? Gourmet seafood? Or-the following is a recipe of the Qing emperor, from which we may feel that the emperor is just so. This is the menu of Emperor Qianlong's dinner on the first day of October in the twelfth year of Qianlong (AD 1747). The menu is as follows: "The bird's nest, shredded chicken, mushrooms and cabbage are smoked with fire, followed by the Eight Immortals (smoked slices of bird's nest and duck, chicken wings and tripe mushrooms), fat chicken and cabbage, preserved chicken, fermented bean curd, rotten duck, shredded pheasant with sauerkraut, roasted venison, shredded chicken and dried mutton in a pot, thus saving a dish. A honey, a lesbian, a side dish, a southern dish, a spinach, a sweet-scented osmanthus radish, a bowl of glutinous rice, a sheep egg powder soup, a radish soup and a wild chicken soup. " (Xu Qixian: "Imperial Dining in Qing Dynasty" Zi Jinchengdi 10) Today, the emperor eats a very ordinary meal, which costs about 20 taels of silver. At that time, the living standard and price level were that a family of five people spent about 30 taels a year. As can be seen from the above menu, Emperor Qianlong's dinner (at that time, the emperor's dinner was two meals a day, that is, breakfast and dinner, so this dinner was a dinner), with more than 20 kinds of dishes and soups. In other words, at present, we ordinary people often (and some even serve) those things, such as chicken, duck, cabbage, radish, spinach, sauerkraut, mushrooms, japonica rice and so on. And venison is very precious, but this venison is basically raised by the emperor himself, so the price of this ordinary meal is not cheap. The oil and water inside naturally went to those who catered to the emperor, that is, officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, large and small.