Ginkgo nuts in honeyed sugar

Public reference · Home adaptation “Poetry and etiquette” comes from the old story of Confucius pressing his son Kong Li to study the Odes and the Rites — without the Odes one cannot speak, without the Rites one cannot stand — and the Kongfu built the Hall of Poetry and Etiquette in its memory; the two ginkgo trees before that hall gave this dish its name. Ginkgo was already tribute in the Song, and Ouyang Xiu even wrote a poem about “a hundred duck’s feet” sent to him by a friend. Within Kongfu cooking it belongs to the sweet course, carried by sugar, honey and osmanthus rather than by aroma — the dish must be “the colour of amber”, and that look is how it is remembered. Joining a saying from the *Analects* to a specific tree made the dish a textbook example of Kongfu naming, which routinely folds allusions, tree age and hall names into a dish name. Only the technique is used here, not the lung- or cough-related claims that circulate about ginkgo, and no therapeutic framing is adopted. **The method and the Kongfu identity have to be kept apart.** The Kongfu name “shili yinxing” is well attested: a report carried by Tencent News from Tide News states that in Qufu, Shandong, the Kongfu mansion served a prized delicacy made from ginkgo nuts, called shili yinxing, and describes the full standard in prose — shelling and skinning, blanching to remove bitterness, simmering until soft, frying sugar with honey and osmanthus paste to a silver-red, finishing with lard, and the amber colour of the finished dish. The story in that report of the Qianlong emperor renaming the dish is a **legend**. **The report gives no gram-level formula**, so the quantities here (nuts, lard, sugar, osmanthus paste, honey) are editorial, set to fit that process, and are **not the original Kongfu weights**. **Ginkgo nuts are toxic, and that is not a formality**: recipes commonly cite “15 nuts per person per serving”, while the researcher at the China CDC Centre for Nutrition and Food Safety, quoted by Xinhua, gives “10–20 nuts for adults, no more than 5 for children, none for infants”. The two are close but not identical; this entry follows the stricter CDC figures and states an explicit ceiling in the allergen note. The toxic compounds concentrate in the germ, so after the alkaline soak described in the report the nuts are boiled a further ten minutes and the germ removed — a separate step here. All weights and times are editorial and untested. Contains ginkgo nuts. **Ginkgo nuts must be shelled, boiled for 10 minutes to slip the membrane, de-germed and cooked — never eaten raw.** A ceiling of 10–20 nuts per person per serving applies, no more than 5 for children; infants and pregnant women should not eat them. If vomiting, abdominal pain, dizziness or convulsions occur within 3–4 hours of eating, seek medical care at once. Contains honey, unsuitable for children under one. Counted as a meat dish under this project’s taxonomy because it contains lard. 腾讯新闻（转潮新闻）：晚潮 | 秋冬时节话银杏 — The source for both the Kongfu identity and the process: the article states that in Qufu, home of Confucius in Shandong, the Kongfu mansion served a prized delicacy made from ginkgo nuts called shili yinxing, and sets out the standard — the nuts shelled and skinned, blanched to remove bitterness, then simmered until soft; sugar, honey, osmanthus paste and a little water cooked to a thick syrup, brought to a silver-red, the cooked nuts added, lard poured over, the finished dish amber, delicate and sweet, meltingly soft and fragrant. The Qianlong-emperor renaming story in the same article is a legend. **The article gives no gram-level formula**; the quantities here are editorial, set to fit this process. https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20241203A06E8K00 新华网：银杏果随意食用易引发中毒 — The basis for every safety step in this entry. A researcher at the China CDC Centre for Nutrition and Food Safety explains that ginkgo nuts contain ginkgolic acid, ginkgotoxin, hydrocyanic acid and allergenic proteins; the germ holds most of the hydrocyanic acid and ginkgolic acid and is the most toxic part, and ginkgotoxin is the principal agent in acute poisoning, which typically begins 3–4 hours after eating, with fever, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, convulsions and breathing difficulty, and can be fatal through respiratory failure. For shelled nuts bought at market: remove the hard shell, boil 10 minutes to slip the membrane, pull out the germ, and only then cook; never eat them raw; and keep to 10–20 nuts for adults, no more than 5 for children, none for infants. Step 3 and the allergen note follow this. https://www.xinhuanet.com/food/20231108/7ae16ad040644f25b73bb090132e2ec7/c.html AI-generated illustration; not kitchen-tested.

Source: WorldBite · public-reference adaptation · Source-attributed editorial adaptation; AI illustration; not an authenticated original recipe.