This year, Chinese New Year falls on a Tuesday. Monday night, if we’re being precise. Traditionally, it begins the night before. When I was growing up in San Francisco, the signs were unmistakable. My mother would stop cleaning. She’d tell us not to wash our hair. And in the refrigerator there would be a giant round disc taking up a shelf on its own. Brown. Homogeneous. Let me say this clearly: it’s nonsense that all Chinese families make dumplings for New Year. My mother was Cantonese. That meant no dumplings. If you wanted dumplings, you went out for them. Or you ordered them from the dim sum cart. Want to keep reading this post? The rest of the post is on my free Substack. Subscribe for weekly Asian food history and food tidbits!

This week I was inspired to write about beef after watching Eric Sze’s videos on Instagram about cooking dairy cattle. As it turns out, we have been discussing food taboos in my Eating Right class, which got me thinking about whether there are any Chinese food taboos. The following is the first installment of my Substack newsletter : This post grows out of a question I can’t neatly answer: was beef taboo in China before the late nineteenth century? Step into any Chinese restaurant today and the menu will be rich in beef. Beef and broccoli. Beef in oyster sauce, in mapo tofu, chow fun noodles, even in dumplings. My Chinese mother’s table was also full of beef. Beef for my American father. Beef for her mild version of mapo tofu. We ate so much beef growing up that I was surprised to learn, years later, that the Chinese word rou , “meat,” traditionally referred to pork, the quintessential Chinese flesh. But beef was not always a popular food in the Middle Kingdom.. It has become something of a cliché to say that cattle were beasts of burden rather than sources of meat or milk. Where available and affordable, cows allowed farmers to plow more effectively and increase yields. The state, at times, even tracked cattle sales and distributed animals to settlers opening new lands. There were solid economic reasons not to turn cattle into dinner. Want to keep reading? Subscribe to my free Substack newsletter, The Curious Eater, and find out the answer... Beef tongue and brisket, photo by author

This post comes after a sleepless night. Not from the news, or even a sick child. From a video, posted to some Facebook group, about a medieval Chinese recipe. A young woman, dressed as a Tang-dynasty beauty in a flowing gown, prepares a translucent dessert filled with cherries. She adds sugar to draw out their sweetness. Yingtao biluo A chewy cherry strudel. Was it real? Is any of it real? An image generated by Gemini based on existing descriptions, with the usual historical liberties. Note that white sugar was not yet a common household item in the Tang dynasty. Like many people, I have bad habits. One is spending the last twenty minutes of my day scrolling social media, trying to quiet an unquiet mind. Lately that mind has been especially restless—long days as a college professor and mother, a recent burst of intellectual energy from teaching my course on the history of dietary advice. But the moment I saw that video, I had doubts. Was this wishful thinking? Or was this actually something someone once ate—in China, of all places?... To keep reading, please sign up for my free Substack newsletter, which is delivered twice a week

This blog is adapted from my Substack newsletter, The Curious Eater. Here, I revisit questions of what it means to eat right--both in China and in Europe in the fourteenth century. If you are curious about vegetarianism in China, you might also take a look at this older post of mine, from the pandemic days. It’s the fourteenth century. A blond noblewoman wrinkles her pale brow as she sprinkles ash into her porridge. Meanwhile, half a world away, her Chinese counterpart smiles as she brings a flaky pastry to her lips, a fitting end to a decadent feast. Both women are what we today would call vegetarians. They abstain from all forms of flesh and eggs, for their salvation. But which diet would you prefer? This is a real question—one I posed to my Honors students earlier this week. It was meant as a lighthearted entry into what became an intense discussion of the medieval Christian diet. I arrived at the comparison by accident. The week before, we had covered Buddhist vegetarianism, and in a moment of inspiration—or madness—I gave my students a rough translation of twenty vegetarian recipes from The Forest of Affairs , a fourteenth-century Chinese almanac. Now we were turning to European ascetics from the same period. The contrast was immediate—and gave us much food for thought. The Chinese recipes have no meat, eggs, or seafood. But they are anything but austere. The author presents a rich vegetarian cuisine for laypeople seeking to accrue good karma by taking the killing out of their meals. There are noodles dressed with sauces of fresh cheeses, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and scallion oils. Mushrooms simmered in rice wine. (Alliums and alcohol were technically suspect, but lay practice clearly allowed more latitude than monastic codes.) Sheer dumplings brim with walnuts, persimmons, chestnuts, and more cheese, finished with sugar. Flaky pastries are enriched with melted butter. Mock meats abound: imitation eel sashimi, fake fish, even ersatz jellyfish made from konjac—“devil’s tongue”—still sold in Taiwanese convenience stores. This cuisine is rich in fats, sugars, and refined starches, designed to delight even the most unrepentant carnivore. Little here suggests renunciation. If anything, the message seems to be: we’ll work with your meat tooth. Mock meat in Beijing, Nov 2019 The medieval Christian ascetics could not be more different. In Holy Feast and Holy Fast (1987), Carolyn Bynum describes how saints—especially female mystics—made their food deliberately unpalatable. They did not merely abstain from meat and rich foods or reduce calories. They waged war on the pleasure associated with eating itself. Francis of Assisi gave up cooked food. Clare Gambacorta of Pisa mixed ash into her meals. Columba of Rieti added dirt. Others subsisted on moldy or black bread, raw herbs, or adulterated grains. Still others even added dried dung. The aim was to extinguish desire for earthly delights and to induce physical suffering, bringing them closer to Jesus. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, these strategies increasingly became associated with women. Bynum famously argues that such practices offered them a measure of control in a male-dominated world. Yet disgust and pain were not the only paths to God. The Eucharist mattered just as much. Mystics did not merely rejoice in taking communion; they described its gustatory qualities in striking detail. Angela of Foligno testified that the host expanded in her mouth and tasted unlike ordinary bread: “it had the savor of meat, but with a completely different taste… it went down with great ease and sweetness.” Others said it slipped down the throat “like fish.” Sweetness recurs, the host being compared to honey. The divine had a flavor profile. Faced with these two visions of virtuous eating, my first impulse was obvious: cultural difference. The worldly, food-loving qualities of the Chinese seemed to shine through—even in the pursuit of enlightenment and release from the profane world. No wonder Chinese cuisine is world famous. Then a student challenged me. “Are they really that different? Isn’t this all about reaching spiritual goals through diet?” He was right. At the broadest level, both traditions pursued salvation through eating right. But the longer I pondered the comparison, the more I suspected something deeper. In both cases, the path to paradise—or nirvana—was experienced through the palate. Not metaphorically. Literally. For medieval European mystics, disgust was a spiritual tool. As Bynum emphasizes, suffering from food was not a glitch in the system. It was the point. Gagging, retching, and vomiting did not signal a rejection of the physical realm; they intensified the mystic’s engagement with it. Pain destabilized the body, induced illness, and drew the eater closer to Christ, who suffered on the cross. At the same time, the Eucharist offered a counterpoint: chewing and swallowing sacred flesh as sweetness, ease, and divine nourishment. Salvation could be ingested. Licence: Public Domain Mark Credit: A Catholic communion. Wood engraving by H. Linton after E.-G. Bocourt. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection . What of Chinese Buddhist laity? The evidence differs in genre and tone, but the pursuit of enlightenment—release from rebirth, the extinguishing of delusion—likewise unfolded within a culinary imagination. Here the dairy-rich quality of the recipes from The Forest of Affairs matters. Clarified butter went into doughs, creamy teas, medicines, and congees. Some monasteries reportedly stocked ghee for visitors. This was no accident. Dairy—especially clarified butter—permeates Buddhist scripture and imagery in ways that form a sensory language of awakening. The Nirvana Sutra famously uses butter-making as a metaphor for the path: milk becomes yogurt, then butter, and finally a fragrant, refined essence. For medieval Chinese Buddhists, butter became associated not only with enlightenment but with teaching itself and the taking of vows. Monks were anointed with ghee. The Buddha nourished himself with rich milk porridge just before meditating beneath the bodhi tree. To catch a “whiff” or “taste” of ghee could signal the stirrings of awakening. Su Che, the younger brother of Su Shi, writes in a poem after a simple meal of wild greens: “In the inner “Flowery Pool” (e.g., the palate), there is naturally the taste of ghee.” Having eaten only vegetables, he experiences the “taste of ghee”—a sensory intimation of a state beyond ordinary awareness. We often describe medieval Christian asceticism as “denying the flesh” and Buddhist vegetarianism as “transcending the material.” Both formulations miss something. In both traditions, salvation was not only contemplated. It was sniffed, tasted, and swallowed. My students chose the Buddhists, incidentally. Butter over ash. Even if the latter, some claimed, might make bread taste angelic. Bibliography: Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987). Chen, Yuanjing 陳元靚 (13th cent). 1330-1333. Xinbian bianzuan zenglei qunshu leiyao Shilin guangji 新編纂圖增類群書類要事林廣記 ( The Extensive forest of affairs, newly compiled and illustrated with additional book types digested ). In Yuwai Hanji zhenben wenku, zibu 域外漢籍珍本文庫. 第五輯, 子部 (A library of rare editions of Chinese materials abroad, works of philosophers). Chongqing and Beijing Xinan shifan daxue chubanshe and Renmin chubanshe. John Kieschnick, “Buddhist Vegetarianism in China” in Roel Sterckx, Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China (New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 2005).186-212 Thanks for reading! 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Animal rights activists could learn something from the Chinese about ethical eating. Last year, British baker Hannah Edwards found herself at the center of controversy. The small business owner, also known as the Cake Illusionist , had perfected the techniques for baking sponge cakes that resembled real animals. Some of her creations included a shar pei, a popular Chinese dog breed, life-sized Springer Spaniels, and even horses. The cakes incensed animal rights activists. According to the Daily Mail , ten thousand of them trolled Edwards, calling her a closet serial killer. Thousands of miles away in Taiwan, J.C. Co Art Kitchen sold chocolate ice cream that looked like the same shar pei. The café owners encountered none of the ire that Edwards attracted. Newspapers in Asia reported that while some people thought the ice cream “dogs” were cute, others found the dessert creepy. One person told a reporter, “It is as if a dog is lying here and I feel like cutting into him will hurt him.” Despite the mixed reviews, J.C. Co soon had trouble satisfying orders. Before long, a knock-off product, a mousse shar pei, appeared in Beijing. Sitting on all fours, the “dog” looked up with pleading eyes. The chocolate dustings mimicked the texture of fur and skin folds. Chinese netizens picked up on the resemblance. Pictures of people and real pets posing with the “shar pei” circulated on social media. A miniature mousse "dog" But dog meat is taboo in major cities in the Chinese-speaking world. Many of them regard dogs as pets, and they have never seen one on a plate. Some of them even engage in rescue operations, traveling to remote places in Western China where people still occasionally consume dog meat. A few years ago, the New York Times reported a noisy scuffle between locals and Chinese animal rights activists. Two years ago, Taiwan enacted a ban on dog meat. The milder response to the “dogs” in Asia reflects the fact that Chinese are used to imitation meats. Mock meats, in fact, have been a hallmark of Buddhist vegetarianism in China for centuries. Stanford scholar John Kieschnick thinks medieval Buddhist monks offered tasty meat substitutes to encourage lay people to adopt a vegetarian diet. Although pious Buddhists avoided animal flesh, fish, and eggs, they saw nothing wrong with eating foods that shared the texture or appearance of the real thing. The resemblance of mock meats made of konyaku and gluten can be uncanny. In the 1960s, a Japanese health enthusiast introduced faux meats to the United States. Nowadays, Americans can buy not only tofu “burgers,” but also Thanksgiving turkeys made with gluten. Westerners are now working hard to take meat substitutes to new levels of craftsmanship. Scientists are trying to grow “bloodless” meat in labs. Since no animals will be killed, you will soon be able to devour a medium-rare steak with a clear conscience. Until then, we would do well to take cues from the Chinese. Ethical eating is a fine thing -- so long as no one gets hurt. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Open less than six months, Lucky Lee’s has gotten off to a rough start. The decision of the owners, Lee and Arielle Haspel, to market “clean” Chinese food made headlines. The internet furor has been so intense that Yelp no longer accepts comments. In response to the uproar, the Haspels have clarified what they meant by clean: “‘Clean’ Chinese-American food will actually make [diners] feel good.” This is clean in Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOPian sense of the word: no refined sugars, processed meat, dairy, or gluten. Whole foods that not only make you alert, but also ensure that you look right: a diet that gives you an unblemished complexion and svelte figure. It may be news to the owners of Lucky Lee’s, but China already has a long tradition of clean eating. Ancient Chinese blamed grains for their wrinkles and grays. They thought that fermented mare’s milk was the key to long life. They also practiced yoga and deep breathing. Later writers build on these foundations. Like modern people, they took a dim view of wheat, treating it as poison. To purge their bodies of the toxins in their noodles, they drank cleansing juices with ginseng and China Root. The same writers also preached against poor food combinations. Cow’s milk and sashimi did not mix. Some of their proposals make sense. Chinese writers urged moderate consumption of animal protein and small servings of tofu. (Soy was also poison in medieval China). They encouraged readers to follow protocol: chew thoroughly and avoid eating before bedtime. These writers also recommended sticking to fresh meat and vegetables. Go easy on the seasoning, grease, and caffeine, and no alcohol. These things bloat you. The roots of this philosophy lay in dietary excess. While peasants struggled to get enough to eat, the Chinese elite gorged themselves on buttery pastries and red meats. This tradition peaked in the sixteenth century. As New Abalone is a staple in any fancy banquet. World silver flowed into the Chinese economy, banqueting became a life style for the rich and powerful. Feasting began promptly at noon, lasting until the early hours of the morning. Surviving menus confirm that hosts exercised little portion control. They treated their guests not only to loads of food, but also the fattiest cuts of meat and made a point of serving pricey items like bird’s nest and shark’s fin. The rounds of distilled spirits kept the party going. The constant feasting contributed to far more than bad health. It led to banquet fatigue. Rich men began craving lighter fare. Before long, experts in gastronomy joined doctors in composing treatises on healthy eating. Late in the sixteenth century, a merchant’s son discovered the pleasure of leafy vegetables. Clean eating is poised to make a comeback in China. For several decades, the Chinese elite marked the end of rationing with over-eating. The celebrations have come at a familiar cost: expanding waistlines, increasing levels of cardiovascular disease, and a diabetes epidemic. Five years ago, my friends greeted the government crackdown on banqueting with relief. I too experienced banquet exhaustion on my last trip to China. After twelve courses and a night of toasting, I ached for simple fare. The hours of vomiting also helped me find clarity. Chinese consumers are receptive to American versions of clean eating. Worried about the toxins lurking in their meals, many of them now buy organic and avoid refined starches. You can even get a juice cleanse in Beijing before heading off to yoga. It would not surprise me if a version of Lucky Lee’s popped up in a Chinese city soon. The Chinese are already used to clean eating. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

We all know the stereotype: Chinese food is dairy free, because Asians are, as a rule, lactose intolerant. Unlike Northern Europeans, they are born without the enzyme that breaks down complex milk sugars in adult intestines. Since I am a grown-up and Asian, this means that I will get diarrhea every time I have a glass of milk (or maybe every other time since I am only half Chinese). Q.E.D. I should play it safe and stick to soy Traditional Chinese medicine, however, begs to differ. Physicians in traditional China actually thought that milk promoted gut health . They prescribed dairy foods for a variety of stomach problems. Feeling nauseous? Drink a cup of sheep’s milk. Unable to eat? Mix equal parts raw and cooked cow’s milk, and drink twice a day on an empty stomach. Got a problem with a distended belly because of chronic constipation? Combine a little milk with a lot of mallow seeds. In the eyes of Chinese doctors, you really could not go wrong with dairy. Milk was good for just about any condition. You could drop donkey’s milk into the ears to expel bugs, or make enemas out of sheep’s milk yogurt. For a more appealing remedy, broil pears in butter and honey. It will cure the common cough and give you a sugar rush. Chinese physicians also gave their patients cow’s milk, simmered with Indian long peppers, to treat dysentery. By most accounts, the remedy worked wonders. Some patients reported being cured after only a few sips. Chinese doctors not only regarded milk as a potent drug, but they also believed it should be a constant part of the diet. They urged their patients to make a daily habit of dairy. Take the famed authority on Chinese medicine, Sun Simiao (581-682). Sun encouraged his patients to load up on cow’s milk and butter, even if they suffered from weak stomachs. Cow’s milk made you strong and energetic and your skin moist. Yogurt kept things moving through the large intestine. Ghee was a superfood that added years to your life. It’s time for us to retire the stereotype. Had milk really caused the runs, I’m sure that Chinese doctors would have noticed and steered their patients clear of dairy. Since they did the reverse and told people to consume more milk, we should take heed. After all, these doctors have treated Chinese bellies for centuries. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

You don’t need European genes to enjoy dairy. Last week, an old article from the Economist resurfaced in my news feed. “ No Use Crying Over Milk: Milk and Economic Development ” (2015) traced the roots of European prosperity since the 1800s. In a nutshell, the author proposed that dairy consumption lay behind Europe’s historic rise. Unlike the vast majority of Asians and Africans, most Europeans have a genetic mutation that allows them to digest fresh milk. Supposedly, this mutation gave Europeans an edge over the rest of the world. It enabled them to access extra calories from farm animals, paving the way for better health and global dominance. If the argument sounds far-fetched, it is. The article also cherry-picked the evidence, to put it mildly. Most Swedes and other Northern Europeans have inherited a genetic mutation that makes them lactase persistent . Throughout their adult lives, they continue to make lactase, the enzyme that breaks down the complex carbohydrates in milk. This means that they can usually drink milk without obnoxious symptoms, like flatulence or diarrhea. But Europeans are not the only people who have won the genetic “lottery.” Scientists have also identified two other genetic mutations that perform the same function as the European gene. One of these pops up in Kenya and Tanzania; the other in Sudan and the Middle East. Chinese researchers are on the lookout for a separate mutation for lactase persistence specific to Central Asia. Besides, you do not even have to be lactase persistent to drink milk. In 2009, the Journal of Molecular Evolution published a study of a population of Somalis living in Ethiopia . A team of biologists found that three quarters of their subjects were lactase deficient , as opposed to persistent. The Somalis, however, gave no signs of struggling with their milk. Seventy-one percent of them drank over two cups of the stuff each day. This was not a surprise. Somalis have traditionally been pastoralists, so dairy naturally played a significant role in their diet. But if lactase production wasn’t in play, then what gave the Somalis the ability to drink milk? The researchers suspected that the Somalis had favorable gut flora, which aided digestion. If confirmed, this implies that dietary factors are also important. Camel Milk. My Somali neighbors swear by the stuff, but you can also buy it in Beijing, at a Xinjiang speciality store. The National Institute of Health (2010) thinks people have been too hasty in swearing off milk. They worry that many people assume that they can’t drink milk because they aren’t white. They also warn that we lack reliable statistics about the prevalence of lactose intolerance (more on that next week). If you are still worried about milk, there are plenty of things you can do to ease digestion. You can take your milk in small amounts with meals. You might want to curdle your milk with rennet or vinegar to make cheese , or churn cream into butter. You can also culture your milk and make things like yogurt. After all, this is precisely what our ancestors did. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

The twelfth century was a rough time for China. In 1127, the Jurchens, a nomadic group from Manchuria, invaded and sacked the capital in Kaifeng. They occupied the north for more than a century. To this day, the invasion conjures up bitter memories in China and with good reason. The conquest was disastrous by most standards. The Song empire lost much of its territory. It also had to pay tremendous sums of money to the enemy in exchange for peace. Tens of thousands of Chinese were displaced by the collapse of the north. Song defeat, finally, inspired talented writers to compose gory poems. Losing the north may have been a blow to Chinese pride, but it enhanced its culinary traditions. Refugees from the north introduced the cuisines of Kaifeng to the new southern capital of Hangzhou. In so doing, they created a rich fusion of regional cooking styles. By the end of the fourteenth century, people in Hangzhou feasted on chewy noodles, steamed buns, mutton stews, flat breads, and fresh cheeses. They also enjoyed buttery cookies. Sesame seeds lightly sprinkled on top of this Chinese cookie The following recipe comes out of a twelfth or thirteenth-century cookbook. The author was a Madame Wu, who lived in the South. Unfortunately, we know little else about her. Her recipes, though, reveal the diffusion of northern food traditions to the south. The lady used butter and sesame. She sometimes baked her pastries. The recipe presented some challenges to make. Madame Wu omitted essential information. For example, I was left wondering how much butter or spiced salt to use. She was also mum about baking time and oven temperature. After some fiddling, I got the recipe to work. My interpretation naturally took liberties with the text. I stirred in some butter, but Madame Wu was probably thinking of clarified butter, similar to ghee. She further instructed her readers to flavor the dough with a little spiced salt, but I dumped in a tablespoon (you can dial it back if you prefer more subtle seasoning). She was also vague about what went into the spiced salt, so I improvised. I heated some black pepper with salt in a wok. After the salt tanned, I added equal parts Five-Spice Powder and blended. The mix gave the pastry a distinctive kick. While Madame Wu’s cookie can’t compete with Yunnan rose pastry or Hong Kong custard bun, the results were not bad. My family devoured three successive batches. As usual, I am eager to know if anyone has suggestions for improvement! Sweet Crispy Cookies Flour, 2 cups Sugar, 1/3 cup Vegetable oil, ¼ cup Ghee or butter (1 T) Spiced salt (1 teaspoon- 1 tablespoon) Cool water, ¾ cup Sesame seeds 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 2. Knead together the flour, sugar, and oil. 3. Add the ghee or butter, spiced salt, and cold water. Add as much water as necessary to form a smooth ball. 4. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes (don’t refrigerate). 5. Divide the dough into three batches and shape them into logs. 6. Slice the logs into about 8-10 equal pieces. Roll out the disc into circles and make sure that they are thin. 7. Sprinkle on some sesame seeds. 8. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow the cookies to completely cool before eating. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Do you feel like Instagram is ruining your dinner conversation? Or worry that you pick your entrées not based on how they taste, but how they look on Facebook? If you have these thoughts, you are not alone. The famed man of letters, Yuan Mei made similar observations: People eat to be seen, admired, and envied. Yuan Mei, though, was talking about the eighteenth century. He complained that people no longer savored their food. Instead, they chose pricey but flavorless items so that others would hear about it. Hence, his plea: Eat with the mouth, not the ears! Sea cucumber (pricey, but Yuan thought it overrated). Yuan Mei was probably thinking, in part, about the widespread habit of composing food poetry. Until the early twentieth century, literate Chinese wrote as often about their food as we do. Whereas our writings take the form of Instagram posts or blogs, they composed verse, running as few as four lines. Many of them were about fancy meals: lavish affairs that consumed the better part of evenings and involved exotic delicacies like palm face civet. Others, however, celebrated more quotidian fare. A casual lunch taken on a country road. A snack eaten at home. Or a late breakfast after a night of partying. Matsutake mushroom soup (also pricey) The poems were like modern social media posts. They created virtual communities, circulating through correspondence, manuscript, and print. Some Chinese writers found publishers who printed their work by the thousands. But others approximate present-day bloggers. Aspiring to become “influencers,” they self-published, producing print versions of their thoughts from home. Much like Instagram posts , poems translated the act of chewing into an aesthetic experience. In vivid language, writers conveyed the look of food. These poems engaged not only the eyes but also the ears. Readers chanted or sung them out loud, as well as recited them in their heads. Inspired by a gift of cherries, one poem came with instructions about the melody. The poems were also plays for status. They aimed to wow their audience with their authors’ literary finesse and impeccable taste in booze. They also broadcasted social connections. What was the point of attending a banquet with someone important if no one ever read about it? Yuan Mei carped about self-aggrandizement, but he was as guilty as the next man. A talented poet, he is best remembered today for his treatise on gastronomy, or the Recipes from the Garden of Contentment . Scholars cull the text for clues about cuisine in the eighteenth century, but it offers gossip, too. Yuan Mei told which famous people invited him for meals, where he enjoyed the best tofu, and who made for terrible hosts. (He once begged an acquaintance never to invite him over again.) Yuan Mei did not keep any of this to himself. While his treatise only came out in print after his death, it circulated within his social circle for years. It is easy to point the finger at technology. Yuan Mei, though, reminds us that eating has never just been about the food. The medium has changed, but the impulse to impress remains the same. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

If taro-tapioca pudding doesn’t sound like a Chinese food, you’d be right. In my Cantonese mother’s kitchen, it was much more. It was also medicine. At first pass, the purple-hued treat looks like an English pudding. The tapioca is processed from cassava root, a crop native to the New World. The milk used to be condensed milk. It also offers incontrovertible evidence of its presumed foreign origins. A common ingredient in European-styled sweets from colonial Hong Kong and Macau, condensed milk features in the egg custard tart, a dim sum classic. Taro tapioca (with sago) But the recipe was more than an English pudding with mild Chinese flourishes. Taro tapioca may have begun its career as a Western dessert, but Cantonese cooks remade it in the image of a sweet soup ( tangshui 糖水). Towards this end, they added taro root, omitted the eggs, and thinned out the pudding to make it soupy. In South China, sweet soups were not only delicious, but also had medicinal properties . They “cooled” and “replenished” bodies damaged by heat and exhaustion. Each of the recipe’s elements, in fact, had a therapeutic purpose. Take the translucent pearls, or sago ( ximi 西米). Traditionally produced from tropical palm starch, sago was a superfood and a staple in sweet soups. Doctors thought it cured emaciation and weakness in the legs. Sugar, too, had health benefits. It lubricated the lungs. Taro was reportedly good for developing fetuses and cleansing the body. Even the milk fit with this notion of food therapy. Physicians argued that milk saved the old, feeble, or malnourished. In recent years, taro tapioca has returned to its roots as a sweet. It’s available in Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, under the dessert section of the menu. In recent years, cooks in the United States have begun substituting coconut milk for the dairy. In so doing, they have transformed the recipe into a vegan treat, and also re-aligned it with preconceptions about the Chinese diet being dairy-free. From custard pudding to therapeutic soup to vegan dessert, taro tapioca has come full circle. Recipe For the recipe, I used Japanese taro, which is the size of a new potato and has a white-colored flesh. But if you like a deeper purple color, use the large taro. It’s also less starchy. Taro, 2 cups Large tapioca or sago tapioca pearls, ¼ cup Milk, 1 cup (or a combination of dairy or plant-based milk) Sugar, ¼ cup Water, 2 cups 1. Rinse the tapioca pearls and soak them in water overnight (at least seven hours). 2. Peel the taro and cut into cubes. 3. Steam the taro until tender, about 10 minutes in the Instant Pot. 4. Combine taro with milk and blend into a paste (you can omit this step if you like chunks). Let the mixture sit for an hour. 5. Heat the tapioca pearls and the taro-milk over a low flame, taking care not to scald the milk. Simmer the mixture. 6. When the tapioca pearls are translucent (after about 20 minutes), turn off the heat. Allow the mixture to sit for 10 minutes. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Wanna get away from milk, but not sure about soy? There’s good news. I have an ancient Chinese recipe. It tastes better than the almond milk at the grocery store. Soy-milk may well be the most popular and widely-consumed dairy alternative in the world. But it is far from the only plant-based option from China. Centuries before the Chinese made a habit of soy-milk, they sipped buttermilk and yogurt along with their fritters. Fresh milk, however, was a seasonal product in traditional China. In many places, it was scarce. In response, Chinese cooks came up with ingenious workarounds. In the first century AD, someone figured out they could make “yogurt” from apricot kernels. Below, I include a recipe for the plant-based “yogurt,” based on a ninth-century household manual. My source, Mr. Han, was an obscure person with influential relatives. He also had a deep interest in practical matters: agriculture, animal husbandry, food preparation, and medicine. Mr. Han regarded his “yogurt” as more than a sweet treat. He also believed it had medicinal properties. If you add perilla seed and Job’s tear to the “yogurt,” it cures nasty coughs and other respiratory ailments. In its broad outline, the recipe has changed little since Mr. Han’s day. Modern cooks, however, have made tweaks. They replaced the ghee with milk. Or, in some cases, they omitted the dairy altogether. They switched up the rice. Cooks now use the sticky short grain. They often prefer almonds. Almonds look and taste like apricot kernels, but lack the toxins. Modern Chinese also share Mr. Han’s belief that apricot kernel is a therapeutic food. They argue that it improves the skin, lubricates the body, and replenishes the lungs. A plant-based "yogurt" Ingredients Whole almonds (or, if you are brave, sweet apricot kernels, available at Asian grocery stores), 1 cup Sugar or honey, ¼ cup (or to taste) White rice (uncooked), 1/4 cup Water, 3 cups Ghee or butter, 1 teaspoon (optional) 1. Blanch the almonds in hot water for a minute, then rinse and rub off the skins. 2. Soak the almonds and glutinous rice in water overnight (if it is hot, put the mixture in the refrigerator) 3. The next morning, blend the almonds and glutinous rice in a fresh batch of water. 4. Strain the mixture to remove any coarse matter. 5. Add the sugar or honey, then heat the mixture in a pot, simmering until the mixture reduces and thickens (about 20 minutes) 6. Stir in the ghee and allow the mixture to cool just above room temperature. It should have the consistency of a drinkable yogurt. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page