A Heart That Goes Out to the Neighborhood

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Jang Gye-hyang is another great mother in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea along with Shin Saimdang, the mother of famed scholar Yi I. Jang wrote recipes invented around the middle and late of the Joseon Dynasty in Hangul the Korean alphabet. The book is titled Eumsikdimibang.

In every morning and evening, her servants looked for houses with no chimney smoke. If there was no smoke coming out of the chimney in the morning, it meant that home had no food; and if there was no smoke coming out of the chimney in the evening, it meant that home had no firewood or the head of household was lying ill. Jang Gye-hyang had her servants deliver food and firewood to the needy, and if necessary, she herself built fire for those people. The reason she wrote the cookbook at her age of seventy-five was that her heart went out to those poor people; she hoped that they could find ways to deal with hunger by cooking with ingredients they had around them.