Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

After seeing the word Topkapi Palace, Liang En's interest in this book suddenly increased. Because this palace is the famous old palace in travel brochures.

For the ancient Ottoman Empire, the history of this country can be roughly divided into three places: Edirne, Topkapi Palace and Dolmabahçe Palace.

Among them, Edirne, also known as Adrianople, was the capital of the Ottoman Empire before it captured Constantinople, and also represented the development period of the empire.

Topkapi Palace was the royal palace established by the Ottoman Empire after the capture of Constantinople. It witnessed the rapid development of this empire and turned it into a powerful country spanning Europe, Asia and Africa.

The last Dolmabahce Palace was a European-style building built in the mid-19th century, representing the decline of the Ottoman Empire, known as the Sick Man of West Asia.

The reason why Topkapi Palace is called the Old Palace is precisely because of the construction of the new palace, Dolmabahce Palace. It's just that a modern palace failed to make the entire empire great again as the ruler imagined.

After briefly checking the paper used in the notebook, Liang En found that the paper was about two hundred years old. Considering that the name of Topkapi Palace was written on the recipe, he finally decided to buy the book.

"This book written in Arabic looks a bit old." Liang En said tentatively, "It looks quite interesting. How much will it cost if I want to buy it?"

"Let me take a look." The shopkeeper took the book, looked at it briefly, and then counted the pages. "This book has a total of 157 pages. Just erase the small change and give me $940."

"Wait, you said $940?" Liang En said, pointing to the label on the shelf, "Aren't these things $3 each? I should only have to pay you $471."

"No, no, no, of course not." The shop owner shook his head and pointed to the label. "Turn over that label. I've written it very clearly."

Hearing what the shop owner said, Liang En immediately reached out and turned over the label, only to find that behind the label was a cigarette box with a black pattern on the front and someone writing a small line of text with a black gel pen.

"The price of all organized materials on the bookshelf is twice that of the same number of scattered materials, while the price of books is three to five times that of scattered materials."

"It seems that profiteers all over the world are the same." The first time he saw this row of words clearly, Liang En realized that he met a profiteer this time.

However, Liang En still decided to buy the document. On the one hand, it was because of the history of the document and the imprint of Topkapi Palace on the last page. On the other hand, he saw that these recipes were valuable.

After buying the ranch that could produce dairy products last time, Liang En looked for a lot of books related to the dairy industry, including recipes for various dairy products.

With a rough grasp of this knowledge, Liang En realized that the recipes in the notebook he had now were real, and not just ordinary dairy products. to

According to the contents of the books he had checked before, ordinary dairy products do not need to go through so many processes, nor do they have such high requirements for raw materials.

After paying $940 in cash, Liang En left the room with this small notebook, then met his companions waiting at the door and left.

"What exactly did you buy?" Looking at Liang En's expression, Fan Meng knew that he should have found some treasure. However, compared to gold and silver jewelry, which can roughly infer the value at a glance, this pile of yellowed Old paper is not so easy to judge.

"Recipe, this is a recipe book that records various methods of making dairy products." After seeing that he had walked some distance, Liang En took out the book and pointed to the words on the cover.

"Isn't there some other secret recorded in it?" Pierce suddenly said. "For example, the secrets of treasure hiding recorded by some people, or a forgotten period of history."

Pierce, who had personally experienced the level of Liang En's sixth sense, didn't think that just one recipe could attract Liang En, so he immediately asked more questions because he didn't believe that Liang En only found one recipe after searching for a long time in the store.

"This thing is really just a recipe." Looking at the inquiries of his two companions, Liang En smiled helplessly and shook his head. It seemed that his previous actions had left a deep impression on his companions.

"As you know, I have a small ranch, so I know a little bit about making dairy products. And the methods of making dairy products in this booklet were definitely high-end dairy products in ancient times."

"More importantly, this one has the words Topkapi Palace on it, and the paper is from two to three hundred years ago. So it is likely that the recipe leaked from the home of a powerful person."

"Then why isn't it Sultan's recipe?" Fan Meng asked curiously. "You said this has the words Topkapi Palace on it."

"Because the royal chefs of the Ottoman Empire did not have such recipes at all, and all knowledge was passed on by word of mouth." Pierce, a professional, answered.

"In the old Ottoman courts, recording recipes in private was punishable by death. This was done to preserve the sultan's honor through those unique foods."

"I understand, it's just like the royal banquet that the Chinese emperors had during the feudal dynasty." Fan Meng nodded with an understanding expression on his face. "For example, those imitation meals now only appeared after the fall of the empire."

"Yes, just like the Asitane restaurant we went to before, the main dishes of this restaurant are Turkish imitation dishes, imitating the palace dishes of the Ottoman Empire." Liang En said with a smile.

“Although that restaurant claims to be eating living history, it is palace delicacies from 1532 to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, but if you check the restaurant menu carefully, you will find that there are only simple dishes such as barbecue and almond porridge. The dishes have a rich history.”

"That's right." Fan Meng and Pierce nodded. When they went to this restaurant before, they saw that there was a time next to each dish on the menu. They thought it was very novel at the time, but now they think about it. Part of it has a 19th century date written on it.

"Because only when the Ottoman Empire declined in the 19th century, those ancient traditions would be destroyed." Liang Enxi explained to his two companions. “So those guys can bring out the full recipe.”

"And if we push the time forward to the golden age of the Ottoman Empire between the Imperial Palace and Topkapi Palace, that era when ancient rules were still strictly observed, the recipes can only be guessed based on various documents."

"At least when it comes to some dishes with simple preparation methods, or dishes that are not exclusive to the imperial court, the restoration will not be too difficult, and the restoration result will be very close to the original appearance."

"But when faced with those complicated palace-exclusive dishes, it would be too difficult to reconstruct them with simple introductions in the notes." At this point, Liang En shook the old notebook in his hand.

"And now I suspect that the content recorded in this book is probably the menu given by the Sultan as a reward to his subordinates, and it was secretly recorded by the chef of a certain prince's noble family."