First-grade longevity peach

Public reference · Home adaptation The longevity peach is the commonest image on Chinese birthday tables; the custom of offering peaches for long life draws on the celebratory sense of “the peach tree in full bloom”. The *Zhongguo Kongfu Caipu* recipe for yipin shoutao takes its meaning from “Magu presenting longevity” — Magu is said to have met the Queen Mother of the West three times and found the East Sea shrunk to shallow water, her hair turned white and her hands like a bird’s claws, and she offered birthday wishes on others’ behalf, the point being that someone of her age does the祝贺 for you. Kongfu cooking offers many such dishes where an allusion becomes a name: shili yinxing from the ginkgo before Shiritang hall, yipin doufu from the rank of Duke, daizi shangchao from a large and a small item sharing one platter. Sweet courses at a birthday feast must not only taste good but *look* the part, and this peach is that席面 language. Kongfu pastry-making as a whole insists on baking to order and pursuing colour, fragrance and form together. Only the technique is used here, not the tonifying claims made for yam and jujube. **The Qufu municipal government page for this dish is only available over http and could not actually be opened, so it is not cited here**; this entry instead uses the full-text page of the same *Zhongguo Kongfu Caipu* formula, in traditional characters, and is written from that. **The roll records dish names only, never methods**: the roll for the sixtieth-birthday banquet presented to Cixi, drawn from the *Kongfu Archives* and published by Zhonghua Book Company's Shanghai Juzhen imprint, lists the four pastries as “shouzi oil cake, shouzi osmanthus cake, baihoutao, ruyi roll”. This slot is called “yipin shoutao” — a longevity peach of the same family, but **not the identical name**, and that is stated rather than smoothed over. All the difficulty here is in the modelling: the yam purée must be beaten fine while cool and burnished with the back of a knife so the peach has no cracks, and if the shou characters come out crooked the whole piece is spoiled. Yam makes the hands itch, so gloves or peeling after steaming is easier. **The “glass juice” is a starch glaze, not a boiled syrup** — 2 g of wet starch is all it takes, and poured too thick it buries the character. All weights and times are editorial and untested. Contains Chinese yam, red dates, hawthorn cake, preserved plum and rendered lard, with no tree-nut allergens. Counted as a meat dish under this project’s taxonomy because it contains rendered lard. Yam sap makes hands itch on peeling, so gloves are advisable. 中华书局上海聚珍：真正的“孔府宴”吃些什么？ — Slot evidence. The roll for the four great燕窝 courses presented for Cixi’s sixtieth birthday in Guangxu 20 by the Duke’s mother records the four pastries as “shouzi oil cake, shouzi osmanthus cake, baihoutao, ruyi roll”. This slot is named yipin shoutao — a longevity peach of the same family, though not the identical name. The page states this roll is drawn from the *Kongfu Archives*. https://applet.10100.com/article/106509520 天天百科：一品壽桃（《中國孔府菜譜》） — The source of the method used here, with the full formula and process. Ingredients: Chinese yam 1000 g, preserved green plums 2, long red dates 500 g, cornstarch slurry 2 g, hawthorn cake 30 g, white sugar 200 g, green and red candied shreds 5 g, rendered lard 75 g. Method: the dates are boiled until soft, peeled, stoned and mashed; the paste is fried with lard and sugar over low heat until dry and set aside; the yams are steamed about 30 minutes, cooled, peeled, trimmed and beaten to a fine purée; the hawthorn cake is cut into strips 5 × 0.7 × 0.3 cm and the shreds and plums are minced; on a large plate the purée is shaped over the date base into a peach, two leaves are pinched at the stem, the surface is burnished and the veins outlined in green shreds, the character shou is spelled in hawthorn strips, the tip and lower body are dotted with red shreds, a plum is set at the stem, and it is steamed 5 minutes; sugar and water are boiled and thickened with cornstarch into a glass glaze and poured gently over. https://twwiki.net/wiki/wrwzy7r0z83k6qm.html AI-generated illustration; not kitchen-tested.

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