employed in the 15th Century, the cooks in the employment of the court would be expected to provide for around 10,000 to 15,000 people on a daily basis, including providing them all with wine. Aside from just cooking food to be eaten, the court also employed around 1,800 cooks to prepare sacrifices and offerings for rituals, around 200,000 animals were sacrificed yearly, including vast amounts of geese, pigs, and sheep. Cooks would provide meals for merchants and landlords as well, but, they weren't employed at the same high rate as the cooks employed by the court. The merchants and landlords who could afford the luxury of personally cooked food by a professional chef could usually expect a great quality and even extremely skill-heavy and laborious types of cooking, for example baking and sugar animals. This exclusivity of cooks for the rich associated the profession and its work with the greed and gluttony of the elite classes, so, often private food preparation with cooks would be connected with evil or villainy. Status of cooks The cooks in Ming China, as mentioned before, were only available to be utilised by the very wealthy. Despite the exclusive nature of the job and the status levels of those they prepared food for, the occupation of the cook during Ming times was not a highly coveted profession due to the amount of animal killing involved with being a cook. The negative karma associated with killing the sentient living beings, and then using this as a means of making a living, makes the profession of cook one that was described to be avoided. The nature of a cooks work and the religious values of Taoism and Buddhism clash heavily, reinforcing this idea of a cook being an undesirable occupation, furthermore, cooks were known to request the safe passage of their slaughtered animals to the Pure Land through Amitabha. Despite the various negative aspects associated with the cook profession in Ming China, there were still some positives for it, being a cook required a certain level of skill and to a certain extent it was artisanal, demanding fine tuning of skills and finesse, which in turn earned the profession of cook and other similar professions respect amongst their peers. Recipe books Cooks in Ming China could learn their trade through the multitude of recipe books and herbal guides that was published during the Ming Dynasty. These books