The Jinchan Uigwe and the Court Banquet Records

The uigwe are the protocol books of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), compiled so that the court could repeat its ceremonies exactly as they had been performed before. Those that record banquets, the jinchan and jinyeon uigwe, were kept in the capital and in the royal archives, and they describe feasts held within the palaces of Seoul for kings, queens and queen dowagers.

A banquet record of this kind sets down the occasion, the guests and their seating, the officials responsible, the musicians and dancers, and the dishes laid before each table. Its purpose was administrative and ritual. A later court, wishing to mark a similar anniversary, could open the volume and reproduce the earlier arrangement, so that the food is recorded as part of an order of ceremony and not as a collection of recipes. This is the first thing a cook must understand when reading them. The records name dishes and count them, and they list the quantities of provisions drawn from the royal stores, but they do not teach method. The skills of the palace kitchen, the sujangwon and the women who worked there, passed from hand to hand and were learned by practice. For the way a dish was made, the cook turns to the cookery texts that stand beside the court books: the Eumsik Dimibang of Lady Jang Gye-hyang (1670), the Sanga Yorok, the Gyuhap Chongseo of Lady Bingheogak Yi (1809) and the Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje. The banquet records supply the occasion and the structure; the household texts supply the technique. The banquet tables the records describe were built on height and symmetry. Foods were piled in tall, ordered arrangements, and the principal table was set apart from those of the other guests. The dishes recorded include rice cakes, fruits, meats, fish, jeon, jeok and noodles, with the seasonal ingredients and the means of cooking them listed in the supply accounts. Together these show a cuisine of the court in which colour, balance and rank were all expressed at the table. The line of this knowledge did not end with the dynasty. After the fall of the Joseon court in 1910, under Japanese rule, the palace kitchens were dispersed, and the war of 1950–1953 and the division of the peninsula brought further disruption. Court cooking survived through those who had learned it in the palace and taught it afterwards. It was later designated in South Korea as an Important Intangible Cultural Property, with a succession of recognised holders who carry the craft forward. The uigwe, as written documents, give modern scholars and cooks a fixed point against which this living transmission can be read. The same concern for continuity stands behind the inscription of kimjang, the making and sharing of kimchi, on the UNESCO list of intangible heritage in 2013. Maangchi's Big Book of Korean Cooking presents the everyday kimchi and the home table that the court dishes stood above and drew upon, and it is useful here for that reason: it shows the household base of seasoning and preservation on which the grander cooking rested.

The court table was seasoned with the foundations of Korean cooking: soy sauce, doenjang, sesame oil, salt and the mild sweetness of honey, with chilli used sparingly in the dishes of that period. Its flavour was one of restraint and clarity, in which each ingredient was kept distinct and the arrangement of colours across the table mattered as much as the taste of any one dish.