Songshi yangsheng bu 宋氏養生部

Songshi yangsheng bu 宋氏養生部 "Mme Song's (or the Song family's) book of nourishing life" is a book on diet written during the late Ming period 明 (1368-1644) by Song Xu 宋詡 (fl. 1504), whose mother hailed from Songjiang 于松江, but grew up in Beijing, where she became an expert chef. The book was written by her son according to her oral instructions.

It consists of 6 juan, of which the first one deals with tea, alcoholic beverages, soy sauce, vinegar, and other condiments and their use in various dishes. Much information in this chapter is not found in earlier books, e.g., on agriculture. Fascicle 2 presents dishes of "pasta" (mianshi 麵食) with (rice) flour, polygonum (liaohua 蓼花), white sugar, "sugar wraps" (tangchan 糖纏), honey decoction, sweetener (tangji 糖劑) and soups. Some dishes are particularly related to seasons. The central part, fascicles 3-4, give instructions to red meat dishes, poultry dishes, fish, and lower animals (chongshu 蟲屬). Part 5 deals with vegetable dishes and meat broth (gengzi 羹胾) and the last part of the book presents miscellaneous preparations, medical preparations, methods of storage, and taboos and precautions.

The book of Mme Song and her son is interesting because it is a comprehensive overview of the art of cooking and food preparation. As a product of the cuisine of Beijing, it also includes dishes of non-Chinese origin, for instance, recipes from the Mongol and Uyghur kitchen, but also such from the lower Yangtze region, and other parts of China. The text also informs about the preparation of ingredients in a much more detailed way than in earlier cookbooks.

The first print of the book was published by the author's great-grandson Song Maocheng 宋懋澄 (1569-1620). This edition is found in Song Xiang's collection Zhuyu shanfang zabu 竹嶼山房雜部.