The purchasing of ingredients in Gwanglu Temple was usually done by the chefs appointed by the officials.
Since the chefs had taken on this task, they must have been earning a lot of money.
Therefore, there was a rumor in the capital of the former Ming Dynasty that as long as one paid filial piety to the officials, one could enter Gwanglu Temple to cook and earn money.
Those who paid the most filial piety would be able to enter. Once they entered, they would definitely try their best to earn money. They would use all sorts of shoddy dishes to pass off as good ones. It didn't matter how good one's cooking skills were. As a result, there were over 3,600 chefs who couldn't even find one who could cook delicious food. This showed how serious the corruption was.
Therefore, the food that the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty ate was extremely unpalatable. It was the same for his subordinates. Therefore, the food in Gwanglu Temple was famous for being unpalatable in the capital.
After Xiao Ruxun ascended to the throne, he burned a batch of account books in front of all the civil and military officials in the imperial court. One of them was the account book of Gwanglu Temple, which appeased the hearts of a group of people.
Xiao Ruxun didn't make things difficult for the officials in Gwanglu Temple. He arranged for Hei Jin to investigate them. Those who had problems were dismissed during the great purge. They were stripped of their official positions and titles, demoted to commoners, and sent back home to farm. The remaining few who had integrity continued to work.
The chefs in the temple were either investigated or killed. The boss was chased away, and there were only about 400 people left. There was a need to recruit more in the future.
Using this opportunity, Xiao Ruxun cleaned Gwanglu Temple and replaced it with a batch of new people that he had promoted from the bottom. This was to control the mouth of this money-eating glutton. Then, he took control of the purchasing power and arranged for a specialist to make a statistical table.
The specialist counted the number of people and livestock that the officials and the palace needed to eat. He set a new treatment according to each rank, such as what to eat and drink every day. The fixed time and fixed quantity were purchased to eliminate waste and save money.
The officials of each rank had their own arrangements. There were strict rules on how much to eat, what dishes to cook at what banquets, and how much to eat. The rules were so detailed that they didn't give the subordinates a chance to mess around.
Especially the expenses of each palace. There were many concubines in the previous Ming Dynasty, so each palace had its own small dining hall. The Crown Prince and Empress Dowager were the same. Xiao Ruxun directly cut down the expenses. He didn't care that there was no one in the harem now. He directly stipulated that all the food of the royal family would be provided by the imperial kitchen. No palace was allowed to open a small dining hall without permission.
That was true, but Xiao Ruxun's royal family had a total of five people in total.
After all, a considerable portion of these expenses were Xiao Ruxun's own expenses. After separating the food and drinks, the expenses of the Imperial Kitchen would be borne by Xiao Ruxun herself. There were fewer people now, but there would be more in the future.
Of course, if one wanted to embezzle, there were many ways to do so. Hence, Xiao Ruxun directly ordered the Central Audit Department to be in charge of the expenditure of the palace funds.
All expenses inside and outside the palace had to be approved by the Central Audit Department before they could be allocated. They also had to provide the relevant evidence to prove that there was no corruption. Once a problem was found, they would be immediately imprisoned.
Therefore, following the illustrious reputation of the Central Investigation Department, the Central Audit Department also became the most feared group of people in the palace.
The officials of the Central Investigation Department wore black official robes and were called "Black King of Hell" by the court officials. The officials of the Central Audit Department also wore black official robes and were called "Black Impermanence". Anyway, they all took lives. It was just that the Investigation Department was more ruthless and could kill.
After the expenditure and accounts of money were controlled by the people of the Central Audit Department, whoever went out to purchase must go through the Audit Department.
The cook brought the purchase application of Gwanglu Temple and the imperial kitchen to apply for money from the Audit Department's official. Then he took it out to purchase. The Audit Department sent two officials to follow and monitor.
After the purchase, it had to be checked again by the Audit Department to see if the purchase was right and enough. Then it would be registered and brought into the palace.
The opportunity to play tricks was reduced to the minimum, but there were still people who wanted to play tricks, thinking that the current dynasty was the same as the previous dynasty.
There was a cook from Gwanglu Temple who did not give up and tried to bribe the Audit Department's official. He said that they would split the money equally. In the end, he was arrested on the spot and handed over to the Black King of Hell of the Investigation Department. He committed the crime that morning and was beheaded in the afternoon.
After the beheading, his head was even taken to Gwanglu Temple to warn the cook not to have any evil thoughts. Three people fainted on the spot and five peed their pants.
After this incident, Xiao Ruxun attached great importance to it. He also strengthened the requirements for the selection of the cooks. Although he ate his own personal kitchen, if the food at Gwanglu Temple was too bad and he was ridiculed by his subjects, he would also lose face.
Those who ate in the Guanglu Temple were not palace maids and servants, but serious officials, such as officials of the Hanlin Academy and the Cabinet, medical officers, instructors, and so on. These were all officials. If they didn't eat well, they would gossip when they went out.
Therefore, Xiao Ruxun ordered the officials who were allowed to eat to complain about the cooks. If they felt that any dish was too bad, they could complain to the officials of Gwanglu Temple. They could investigate the cook who made the dish. If they were complained about twice, they would be investigated for how they got in and would be punished.
Since then, the good times of the officials and the cooks of Gwanglu Temple were gone forever, but the people who ate had the good fortune to eat.
The officials of the Audit Department even rummaged through cabinets and cabinets for information. They specially made some statistics and calculated that during the Wanli period of the previous Ming dynasty, the amount of money spent on food in the palace was about 12,226 taels. Every day, about 421 taels were spent on food and drink in the inner court.
Daming's silver was worth much more than the silver of the Manchu Qing. Many people had never seen silver in their entire lives.
For commoners, it was normal to live on five taels of silver a year.
The purchasing power of silver was very high. One tael of silver could buy 377 catties of rice. For meat, one catty of pork was 0.02 taels, one catty of mutton was 0.015 taels, a large chicken 0.05 taels, and a large goose 0.2 taels.
One tael of silver could buy 50 catties of pork, 66 catties of mutton, 20 chickens, and five geese.
These silvers could be used to buy twenty-one thousand catties of pork and one hundred and fifty-eight thousand catties of rice every day.
This was just the consumption of the inner court. The royal family and the palace maids and servants spent money on food.
This did not include the food cooked by Gwanglu Temple. The palace people did not have the right to eat the food cooked by Gwanglu Temple. They could only bring their own food and cook it outside the palace before bringing it in to heat it up before eating it.
Gwanglu Temple only cooked for people of status, such as the Emperor, the royal family, some officials, and people who worked in the palace. On major festivals, Gwanglu Temple had to organize banquets. The amount of silver that Gwanglu Temple used was no less than that of the inner court.
However, after Jiajing, the nobility in the palace did not eat at Gwanglu Temple.
Everyone knew that the food at Gwanglu Temple was terrible. At the beginning, there was nothing that could be done. Even the Emperor obediently ate the food at Gwanglu Temple, much less other people.
Later, starting from Jiajing, the Emperor took the lead in not eating the food at Gwanglu Temple. Who would eat most of the people of status eat it?
Each of the concubines had their own small kitchens. The empress dowager, the crown prince, and the other nobles would not eat the terrible food from the same pot. Even the Emperor ate with the eunuch system. This was enough to prove that people of status did not eat at Gwanglu Temple.
In the later years, the only people who ate at Gwanglu Temple were the newcomers who had just become officials and the old antiques who were not well received.
As a result, the food made at Gwanglu Temple was rarely eaten by people in the Wanli era. Its presence was greatly reduced and gradually replaced by the inner court's food system. The inner officials began to control the food of the royal family, but the consumption did not decrease much.
The inner court and the outer court added together, tens of thousands of silver were spent like water every month. However, it was hard to say how much of it was actually spent. In the later years of the Ming dynasty, corruption was rampant in the court. It would be good if thirty percent of it was actually used.
In the Wanli era, the Emperor could use sixteen silver taels a day to eat and drink. Later, it gradually increased. By the time of Chongzhen, he had more than twenty silver taels a day, and that was just the Emperor alone. This did not include the other nobles of the royal family, the empress dowager, or the imperial concubines.
If one really calculated it, the royal family probably spent no less than five hundred silver taels a day on food.
After the Daqin dynasty was established, it set up a separate imperial kitchen and stripped the nominal responsibility of the royal family's food from Gwanglu Temple. It completely stopped playing with Gwanglu Temple. After that, it carried out a purge of the people in the various palaces of the original Ming dynasty.
Before the founding of the country, Shen Yicheng had hired a batch of palace attendants and palace maids. After the purge of the inner court, another batch was hired.
As a result, there were only about five hundred palace attendants and palace maids left. Later, the palace recruited another batch of palace maids. Now, there were more than five hundred palace attendants and eight hundred palace maids. In total, there were only about one thousand and three hundred people. They all ate in the special canteen of the inner court.
The royal family was small in number and did not eat at Gwanglu Temple. The main personnel who ate at Gwanglu Temple were the officials of the outer court and the inner court. There were also the newly added hundreds of officials from the Department of Investigation and the Department of Audit.
The Gwanglu Temple's presence was greatly weakened. The monthly expenses of the outer court on food had dropped by eighty percent compared to the same period in the twenty-fifth year of Wanli.
It was the same for the inner court. In the five months of April to August of the first year of Longwu, the inner court spent on food on average no more than two thousand silver taels a month.
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