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Meat from Northern China

Zhuo meat (𦞤肉), salt-and-qu fermented meat𦞤肉

A 6th-century Qimin Yaoshu recipe for zhuo meat. Donkey, horse or pork is cut coarsely, with any bone, mixed with equal parts of salt and qu and half as much 麥䴷, packed into a jar, mud-sealed and set in the sun; it is ripe in 14 days and boiled for daily meals in place of jiang. This entry is a reading of the text, which gives proportions but no fixed amounts.

Fully documentedMeat14 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe text gives proportions only (salt and qu equal; the 麥䴷 half the qu); the total is left to the maker.
Donkey, horse or pork, coarsely cutPieces with bone are chopped coarsely with the bone[qmys-ws]
Salt and qu, in equal partsThe amount is left to the maker's judgement[qmys-ws]
麥䴷, half as much as the qu[qmys-ws]
Starterqu (麴) and 麥䴷, mixed in with the meat and salt

Total time across the recorded steps: 14 days

Start
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What changes: Donkey, horse or pork is cut into coarse pieces, bone and all

Step 1 of 4
Cut the meat coarsely
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Made best in the 12th month (臘月). Pieces with bone are chopped coarsely with the bone.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A 6th-century Qimin Yaoshu recipe for zhuo meat. Donkey, horse or pork is cut coarsely, with any bone, mixed with equal parts of salt and qu and half as much 麥䴷, packed into a jar, mud-sealed and set in the sun; it is ripe in 14 days and boiled for daily meals in place of jiang. This entry is a reading of the text, which gives proportions but no fixed amounts. Made in 4 steps over 14 days. The longest step, mud-seal and set in the sun, takes 14 days (Jia Sixie 2026).

Key numbers
Main step14 daysReported[qmys-ws]Mud-seal and set in the sun

What makes this one different

Zhuo meat keeps the meat in coarse pieces, bone and all, rather than chopping it fine as meat jiang does, and it uses as much salt as qu, where meat jiang uses half as much. Its sister recipes in the same chapter keep meat in wine lees, in fat or wrapped in mud.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Lees meat (作糟肉法)Wine lees are mixed with water to a porridge and salted; grilled meat is put in and kept in a shaded room; the text says that in hot months it does not smell for 10 days.
  • Ao meat (作奧肉法)A fattened pig killed in the 12th month is cut into pieces 5–6 cun square, cooked in water until the water is gone, then simmered half a day in its rendered fat with wine and salt (1 sheng fat, 2 sheng wine, 3 sheng salt) and stored in a jar under the fat; a cooked, fat-sealed meat, not a ferment.
  • Wrapped meat (苞肉法)Pork killed in the 12th month is wrapped in thatch grass (or rice straw), sealed in thick mud and hung in the north shade; the text says it keeps to the 7th–8th month 'like freshly killed' (ageing, not a ferment).

Safety

The text's own rule: made in the 12th month it has no worms through summer; made in other months it must be covered with care, or worms breed. That rule is not about botulism. Meat mud-sealed tight in a jar gives the low-oxygen conditions C. botulinum needs, WHO names meat products among foods that have carried its toxin, and the text gives salt only as a proportion of the qu, not as a weight or a percentage. The keeping times in the variants are the text's claims, not tested limits. Read this page as history, not as a tested method to copy.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
Temperature, salt and pH
The 6th-century Qimin Yaoshu gives warmth only in words and salt only by volume, and no study we found has measured this recipe.
  1. [who-botulism] World Health Organization, Botulism, fact sheetgov
  2. [qmys-ws] Jia Sixie, Qimin Yaoshu (6th century), vol. 9, ch. 81 作𦞤奧糟苞 (作𦞤肉法, 作奧肉法, 作糟肉法, 苞肉法); Chinese text on Wikisource (齊民要術/卷第九), read 2026-10archive
  3. [wiki-qmys] Wikipedia, Qimin Yaoshu (outline of the book and its author, Jia Sixie)wiki