Peony yancai (radish and shredded garnish soup)

Public reference · Home adaptation Peony yancai opens a Luoyang water banquet and sets the tone for the whole table. It was formerly called “yancai” or “false yancai”, with a legend that a giant radish was offered to Wu Zetian and imperial cooks shredded it, bound it with mung bean starch and served it, drawing the praise “not bird's nest, better than bird's nest”. A later and more widely repeated account says that in 1973 Zhou Enlai dined on the water banquet with foreign guests and the chefs set an egg-yolk peony in the soup, prompting the name. Both are treated as legend and reported anecdote, not established history, and the name does not imply bird's nest: most versions use radish. The broth must be sour and hot — vinegar and white pepper are both essential to the banquet's flavour base. **The traditional process is downgraded and disclosed**: the story goes that the radish threads are made “nine times steamed, nine times dried”, while one public method substitutes freezing the starch-dusted shreds for three days and thawing them to drive off the radish taste. This version uses **neither**, and follows the seat record's double-steam instead — dust with mung bean starch, steam 5–8 minutes, cool and separate, salt lightly, steam again for 5 minutes — which a home kitchen can repeat, though the result will not match the nine-steam version. **Pre-steps are not counted in the cooking time**: shredding and soaking the radish takes about an hour, and soaking dried items is excluded. Aim for safe, reasonably even cuts rather than professional hair-fine work; a shredder is fine. Use prepared unsalted chicken broth rather than making stock. **Quantities, steaming times and the level of sharpness are editorial for 4 servings**; “chicken broth with white pepper” is taken as savoury seasoning only, and no therapeutic claims from any source are adopted. Text-reviewed, not kitchen-tested. Contains egg (egg skin and yolks), soy (tofu skin), wheat (cooking wine) and sesame (sesame oil); broth and processed ham may carry other allergens, so check labels. This version contains meat and is not vegetarian. 百度知道：洛阳水席怎么做（转录洛阳好吃网席面做法） — Seat-level method: radish cut into 5 cm threads of 0.1 cm thickness, soaked 15 minutes, dusted with fine mung bean starch, steamed 5–8 minutes, cooled, separated, salted and steamed 5 minutes more to make the plain yancai; laid in a platter, ringed with cooked chicken, ham, egg skin and bamboo shoot shreds, an egg-yolk peony in the centre, steamed with chicken broth and seasoned after cooking with black vinegar, white pepper and sesame oil. https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/424155851027279692.html 搜狐：洛阳水席“牡丹燕菜”的做法，花艳，菜香，汤鲜味美，酸辣爽口 — Soaking the shreds 10 minutes, dusting with mung bean starch and steaming 5 minutes, then freezing three days as a substitute for nine-steam-nine-dry; shredding the accompaniments, arranging and steaming 10 minutes; seasoning the broth with salt, MSG, black vinegar and pepper, with vinegar and pepper emphasised; the water banquet’s sour-hot character. https://www.sohu.com/a/512149695_121287722 百度知道：洛阳水席24道菜的菜名是什么呀？ — Peony yancai's place among the four centrepieces and its position as the first dish of the table, with the existence of differing menu versions. https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/558521656.html 河南省文化和旅游厅：烩面、胡辣汤、洛阳水席……这群“豫娃”，把河南美食唱成歌 — Official culture-and-tourism feature presenting peony yancai as the representative water-banquet dish and a cultural signature of Henan food. https://hct.henan.gov.cn/2026/08-15/3399309.html FDA: Food Allergies — Basis for declaring egg, soy, wheat and sesame allergens. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/food-allergies AI-generated illustration; not kitchen-tested.

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