Shipinji 食品集

Shipinji 食品集 is a collection of recipes for medical purpose compiled during the late Ming period 明 (1368-1644) by the physician Wu Lu 吳祿, who hailed from Wujiang 吳江, Jiangsu.

The book was first printed in 1537. It consists of two fascicles (juan). The first juan includes recipes for pulses, gourds, vegetables, and red meat; the second one continues with poultry and fish and supplementary notes. The text presents 317 articles on the preparation of dishes, and for some of them also provides some additional notes.

Wu cites from older texts like Huangdi neijing 黃帝內經, Beiji qianjin yaofang 備急千金要方, Shiwu bencao 食物本草 and Yinshan zhengyao 飲膳正要. The author follows the contemporary theories of the four temperature characters of diseases (sixing 四性: cold 寒, hot 熱, warm 溫, and tepid 涼), and the five tastes (hot, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty), which is unusual for common cookbooks, but reasonable from the viewpoint of traditional Chinese medicine.

Quite a few preparation methods are quoted in the famous book of materia medica Bencao gangmu 本草綱目, and the cookbook Suixiju yinshi pu 隨息居飲食譜.