Poultry and Game Birds

Appears in

Published 1992

About

The 18th-century gastronome, Yuan Mei, who is still thought of by the Chinese as the arbiter of culinary excellence, regarded chicken as the most important of all poultry. Among the forty-seven recipes using poultry in his cookbook, no less than thirty-one feature chicken, including one using eggs and one using gizzards. Ten recipes use duck, one sparrow, one quail, two goose and two pigeon.

Then, as now, as highlighted by Yuan, chicken occupied an elevated position on the Chinese table. The Chinese mythical bird, the phoenix, which is the emblem of royalty as well as feminine beauty, is personified in food by the chicken. Traditionally, chicken is a celebratory food, served always at festivals, on people’s birthdays, at wedding banquets or just when there is a guest for dinner. For Chinese trading firms or hong where the boss and his employees eat lunch and dinner together and food is regarded as part of the wages, twice a month, on the first and the fifteenth, it is customary to have a special dinner with a more elaborate menu than the everyday fare. Whereas the day-to-day soup may be the watery broth made with gourds or vegetables, for those fortnightly dinners, a soup made with pork will be served, and a whole chicken, prepared in different ways by the chef, is the standard treat.