Secularized Nourishment for Immortality:
A Daoist Cookbook from Late Ming China
Heng-an Su*
Abstract
This study explores the secularized nourishing thought for immortality in the late Ming by examining a popular Daoist cookbook, Shenmi fushi fang 神秘服食方 (Secret Prescriptions and Recipes of Food and Drink for Immortality) .  This cooking work was written by an amateur Daoist adept, Gao Lian 高濂, and included in the Yinzhuan fushi jian飲饌服食牋 (Discourse on Food and Drink), part of his encyclopedic Yashangzhai zunsheng ba jian 雅尚齋遵生八牋 (Eight Discourses on the Art of Honoring Life from the Studio where Elegance is Valued).  Through examining the text of the 55 recipes in this immortal cookbook, it shows the traditionally Daoist secret and abstruse thought of immortality had been transformed from canonical documentation into a popular way of cooking matter. While alchemical elixirs made from heavy metals and minerals were traditionally prescribed for attaining immortality, only a few heavy substances were adopted in this cookbook and the majority of the immortal ingredients belonged to bencao 本草 (materia medica).  To explore late Ming dietary nourishing thought for immortality, the major question regarding if Gao Lian’s inclusion of this cookbook signaled immortality was secularized in lines with social, religious and medical developments is discussed.  An examination of late Ming literati and commoners’ secular ethos, political position of Daoism, traditional and contemporary immortal thoughts, associated with the contextual demonstration in Gao Lian’s Secret Prescriptions and Recipes of Food and Drink for Immortality is key to understand the secularized immortality by means of household cooking practices.

Keywords: Gao Lian, immortality, nourishing diets, secularization, materia medica