No one knows what's cooked in it except his personal buddy, because everything he cooks in his pot is found by his command. What's cooked in his casserole? The reason is that China people have a deep desire for immortality.
In the novel White Deer Plain, Heiwa goes to work as a long-term laborer for a big landlord. Because of her long-term love with Guo's concubines, she finally broke through the moral barrier and gained the pleasure of sex. Through the chat between Heiwa and Tian Xiaoe, the author tells us that Guo is a tough guy, but the big house is strict.
Therefore, the matter of Hetian Xiaoe and his wife was tightly controlled. When Guo was in Tian Xiaoe, he asked Tian Xiaoe to soak dates for himself, which was euphemistically called "after special brewing, he can keep fit". It doesn't make any sense, so why did the author write it?
In fact, the author told everyone about the ignorance of people's thinking at that time, and also told everyone in which era, the lives of ordinary people at the bottom were completely controlled by these landlord classes, and the people at the bottom were just tools of the upper class, which also laid the groundwork for the following story.
In Jia Pingwa's novel "The Wasted Capital", Zhuang Zhidie has a similar hobby, but the items are replaced by lychees. Historically, the "red elixir" made by Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty was based on the early red color of ladies-in-waiting, with refined Chinese herbal medicines, ores and elixirs from Qiu Shi. Its purpose is also to pursue immortality. However, Emperor Jiajing only lived for 59 years.
The author wrote this event because it is a very common and obscure event in many places. From the point of view of modern medicine, this practice is completely inhuman, a ruthless trampling on women's personality, and also reflects the ignorance of ancient people.