Sometime in the late eighteenth century, a merchant copied—or a scribe captured—the following recipe: Goose roasted in a Western oven (yanglu 洋爐 ).Insert a scallion roll into the belly of a goose and one big head [of onion?]. Using a roasting char (fork), skewer the goose and put it into the oven and roast until cooked. You can do the same with duck and chicken. It is uncertain whether the scribe knew much about the provenance of this recipe. By most accounts, he was a salt m

This week I was inspired to write about beef after watching Eric Sze’s videos on Instagram about cooking dairy cattle. As it turns out, we have been discussing food taboos in my Eating Right class, which got me thinking about whether there are any Chinese food taboos. The following is the first installment of my Substack newsletter : This post grows out of a question I can’t neatly answer: was beef taboo in China before the late nineteenth century? Step into any Chinese rest