Life history is miscellaneous and unorganized, but it is individual and overall. Among them, food culture history is hard to find overall trend. The results are hard to come by the question of whether two or three meals are eaten per day, or whether meat was eaten in the ‘Buddhist nation’, is so unified that there are so many variables, such as times, classes, and regions, and individual experiences and preferences are different.
This book is the result of research on food and drink of the people of Goryeo Dynasty. Unlike the title, however, it is the cultural history of food reserves. Research has focused on the institutional role of food rather than on food consumption.
The outline of this book is as follows.
Chapter 2 describes the types and meanings of grains.
Chapter 3 divided and analyzed the breeding animals and the hunting animals. Meat eating increased in the latter period compared to the previous period without any opinion on existing theories.
In Chapter 4, aquatic products were divided into fish, shellfish or crustaceans, seaweeds, and salt. Salt was explained mainly on the merchandise, which is a merchandise or salt monopoly, which is supplied to citizens rather than food. Salt is explained mainly on relief system or salt monopoly(榷鹽) rather than foods.
Chapter 5 describes vegetables and fruits. As for the vegetables, the data used were taken from the existing research results, so the results were not very different, and the classification criteria of fruits were not suggested. Concerning meals, Goryeo people usually ate two or three meals a day, but there were more cases of the former.
Chapter 6 describes water, tea, and alcohol.
Although the data on the food of Goryeo Dynasty were summarized and some new perspectives were presented. However, the data classification system was insufficient, the recent research results and the data collection were insufficient, and the analysis was incomplete.
Lastly, we must oversee the stages of food production, distribution, cooking, eating, and processing to consume food. However, if we stop at the list of ingredients, we cannot look at the food life.
In spite of various problems, this book summarizes the achievements of the research so far, and it means that the first step was taken. In addition to 『Apparel Life in Goryeo Dynasty』(2016), it will serve as a foundation for the study of life history in Goryeo Dynasty.