Recipes from the Garden of Contentment: Yuan Mei`s Manual of Gastronomy (Suiyuan Shidan) is, remarkably, the first English edition of one of the world's most famous books about food. Recipes from the Garden of Contentment is a treatise and a cookbook, written in the late eighteenth century by the Qing dynasty poet Yuan Mei. It includes recipes for well-known dishes such as birds nest and sharks fin, and offers modern readers an appealing perspective on Chinese history and culinary culture. It was translated and annotated by Sean J. S. Chen with editorial advice from E. N. Anderson and Jeffrey...