The Fragrance of Cooking: A Transmigrated Farm Girl's Culinary Journey

Su Qingyuan, a modern scholar of culinary history, wakes up to find that she has transmigrated into the Su family, a farming household in ancient times. Here, she has parents who cherish her, a sensible younger brother, Su Ming, and a sweet-talking younger sister, Su Xiao. The food is crude and the seasonings are limited. Watching her family eat bland coarse grains and wild greens, she decides to use her knowledge to change their daily lives. Starting with the early beginnings of Lu cuisine in the land of Qi and Lu, she teaches her younger brother how to pick fresh, lively shrimp while making oil-braised prawns, and helps her younger sister learn to recognize the aromas of different kinds of scallions while preparing tofu braised with scallions. Then, as the seasons change and ingredients come and go, she visits a neighboring province and makes stir-fried shrimp in the style of Su cuisine, using fresh bamboo shoots from her own garden to cook cured pork with bamboo shoots. She spends a short time with relatives in the south, where she makes Cantonese steamed fish and emphasizes its natural freshness. When she meets merchants from Bashu, she shares her recipe for mapo tofu and explains how to balance Sichuan peppercorns with chili peppers. Each chapter focuses on one dish, carefully recording the journey of its ingredients from field to table: shepherd's purse dug up in spring becomes shepherd's purse and tofu soup, chestnuts harvested in autumn become chestnut chicken, and cured meat prepared in winter becomes steamed assorted cured meats. Her family is always part of the story: her mother helps peel garlic, her father carries home a newly bought crock for pickling vegetables, her younger brother chops firewood to tend the stove, and her younger sister bounces about, calling, "Big sister's cooking smells the best." There is no contrived melodrama. Through the creation of one home-cooked dish after another, the story shows how regional cuisines took root and developed among ordinary people, naturally weaving the warmth of everyday life together with the history of each cuisine.