The Age of Discovery: Chinese cuisine swept across Europe

Min Xi took Dan Yangzi to the blacksmith shop first and showed him the fine steel made in the shop. This was a variety that Min Xi had tried his best to come up with, and there was more than one kind. Depending on the different additives, some had better toughness and some had stronger hardness.

Since Min Xi is unable to obtain more other metal substances as additives, the types of fine steel are relatively limited.

Dan Yangzi couldn't tell the difference between these fine steels at first, until Min Xi explained to him that the differences between these steels were caused by adding different things.

Dan Yangzi then realized that steelmaking was just like alchemy. Due to different additives, the results would be completely different. This gave him confidence that he should be able to meet Min Xi's requirements.

Min Xi asked him: "Master, do you think you can handle the next job?"

Dan Yangzi nodded: "It should be fine."

Min Xi was relieved: "That's good. There's no need to be too stressed. I won't expect to see results in a short period of time. Rather than producing inferior products in a short period of time, I would rather take a longer time to produce something truly useful."

"Okay." Danyangzi agreed.

"Does the Taoist priest plan to live in our house, or come back to the temple every day?"

"It's not too cold now, so I'd better go back to the temple. When it gets colder, I'll move to your house."

"Okay, when are you coming over? Let me know in advance and I'll have someone prepare accommodation for you."

"Then I will come to your house tomorrow?"

Min Xi said, "Sure. I'll take you to a glass workshop tomorrow. I want to make a set of glassware. I tried it at home but it didn't work. Let's go to the glass workshop to see how it's made."

"it is good."

"Wait for me at home tomorrow when you arrive. I will go with you after I report to the government office."

Danyangzi didn't ask any more questions, just agreed and left.

The next day, when they arrived at the Yun family, Min Xi was not there. Dan Yangzi sat and drank tea for a while, but it didn't take long before Min Xi came back. The two of them went out to the glass workshop together.

The colored glaze workshop is located outside the city, and its main business is to produce glazed tiles, colored glaze kisses and other construction materials.

Strangely enough, colored glaze appeared very early in China. However, by the Ming Dynasty, the technology for making colored glaze had been lost. Only some simple colored glaze tiles, colored glaze kisses and other objects could be made, while those colored glaze ornaments and utensils were mainly imported from overseas.

Min Xi brought Dan Yangzi to visit the glass workshop, in fact, he still wanted to see how they melted silica. The result was not too surprising. In fact, they used a kiln to shape the glazed tiles, put them into the kiln for calcination, and then ignited the kiln and simmered them. After a certain period of calcination until cooling, glazed tiles can be obtained.

What Min Xi needed was completely molten silica, and then blow it into shape while it was still in a molten state, so the simmering method could be used as a reference, but as for when to open the furnace to obtain the molten silica, he still needed to try repeatedly.

How to get pure colorless glass? This required him to rack his brains, recall the chemistry knowledge he learned in high school, and conduct various experiments.

When Min Xi came back from the glass workshop, he quickly arranged for people to build a kiln in the yard.

Yun Ji heard that he was doing a big project in the yard, so he came over to take a look and asked, "Ninth brother, what are you doing?"

Min Xi said: "My previous furnace was too crude and couldn't make colored glaze, so I modified it and made an upgraded stewing furnace."

Yun Ji walked around the half-finished product and said, "Are you sure the furnace needs to be this big?"

"Is this big? This is actually very small. I just made it to try it out. If it doesn't work, I plan to build a big kiln in the farm. If I make a breakthrough in technology, we can sell colored glaze in the future and won't have to rely on imports. In the future, we can also replace all the windows with glass like the Baron's family did." Min Xi outlined a beautiful vision with Yun Ji, and seemed to have forgotten that his original intention was just to burn a few experimental vessels.

Yun Ji smiled upon hearing this and said, "It looks like another way to get rich."

"Haha, yes! In fact, the raw materials for colored glaze can be found everywhere in the Ming Dynasty, but we don't have the technology, so we can't make it." However, Min Xi still had to find a way to get the raw materials. He planned to take some time to visit the mountains around Beijing to see if there was any granite. If there was granite, there would be no need to transport the raw materials from Shandong to Beijing like the colored glaze workshop did, and the cost could also be reduced.

After the furnace was built, Min Xi put the sand he had washed from the river into the furnace and began to calcine it. Since he didn't know how long it would take for the sand to melt in the furnace, he and Danyangzi could only grope their way through it slowly.

The first two times, due to lack of time, the furnace was opened before it reached the melting point, so they had to start over. It was quite time-consuming to open the furnace, wait for it to cool down, and then seal it again. The third time, they waited a day longer than the last time before opening it. As a result, the sand melted, but the iron cauldron that held the sand also melted, and even the kiln they had worked so hard to build was deformed.

This is a serious problem. If the kiln is melted, how can we fire it? Min Xi was speechless. It seems that it is not easy to do experiments with nothing.

Danyangzi asked, "Isn't the Liuli workshop firing fine? What did they use to build the kiln?"

"Yes, we have to ask them for advice." Min Xi said.

Min Xi hurried to the glass workshop again and found out that the kiln was made of porcelain clay. This was easy to do. He could get some kaolin from the ceramic kiln to build a new kiln. The container for burning sand could probably be made of porcelain directly.