Before the Song Dynasty, the main edible oil was extracted from animal oil. Animal oil was used as early as the pre-Qin period, but we often use words to describe the exploitation of people by ancient rulers. People's cream? It is related to animal oil, which directly represents wealth. ? Zhi Min? This refers not to women's cosmetics, but to cattle and sheep fat, and? Gao Min? Stands for lard, which we are familiar with. Because the fat of cattle and sheep cannot be condensed into solid, it is liquid oil, and lard becomes white solid after condensation, so it is described as cream.

As early as the Zhou Dynasty before the Qin Dynasty, the then king of Zhou, as the ruler of middle and high schools, used different animal oils, including birds and poultry, every month according to the changes of the world. At that time, animal oil was not only edible, but also used for lighting. In some ancient Changxin Palace lanterns excavated in modern times, it was found that the wax-like substance remained in the lampshade increased, which proved to be animal oil.

In the Han Dynasty, vegetable oil began to appear. At the beginning, vegetable oil was not soybean oil, rapeseed oil and peanut oil, but sesame oil. At that time, sesame came from a distant ancient country in the western regions, and people called it flax at that time. Although people realized that this plant contained oil, its productivity was very low at that time. If pressing is the main way to extract oil, and simple and primitive actions make the extracted oil extremely inefficient, then sesame oil is mainly used for lighting or even arson. It was in the Southern and Northern Dynasties that the extraction of vegetable oil made new progress and development, and its application scope began to expand. At that time, a new cooking skill was born directly because of the appearance of a large number of vegetable oils. With the popularization of sesame oil, it gradually became the mainstream vegetable oil in the Tang and Song Dynasties, so in the Song Dynasty, high-calorie fried food was very popular.

By the Ming Dynasty, the varieties and technologies of vegetable oil had further developed. People are no longer limited to the use of vegetable oil, soybean oil, rapeseed oil and peanut oil began to appear, and the oil pressing industry ushered in a new life.