A chic Chinese delicacy with over 600 years of recipe. According to the historical recipe, this dish needs to be cooked for many days. It is called "sunghua" and means "pine flowers".
However, you may have heard this name for this dish:
"Century egg" (CENTURY EGGS) or as it is also called "millennial egg" is a Chinese delicacy. This is a black, artificially aged egg that never goes bad.
Let's find out how it turns out this way …
The eggs are covered with rice husks, clay, salt and ash. The eggshell protects them from these elements and microbes for several months while they are buried. Eggs have a different consistency than their fresh counterparts. The protein turns into a creamy brown jelly, and the yolk turns into a black powdery substance. Consuming "centenary eggs" is believed to cure high blood pressure and relieve poor appetite. Historically, they are made from duck eggs, but goose, chicken, turkey and quail eggs can be used as alternatives.
The modern way of cooking may differ from the traditional one. New methods involve soaking the eggs in a very strong alkaline solution. Sometimes zinc or lead oxide is added to soften the yolk of "centenary eggs". The main catalyst for the physicochemical changes that take place in buried eggs is sodium hydroxide, which is formed in the paste or solution that covers the eggs. This alkali causes changes in the color and consistency of the egg components.
Promotional video:
Centenary eggs have a scent that resembles some cleaning products. Hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, which are produced during the fermentation process, give the eggs their distinctive signature print. Eggs can be used as a side dish or served separately. Most often they are eaten with tofu or with rice water and pork. Since some cooking methods involve the use of lead oxide, there is a chance that it will get into the product. It is not necessary to visit China to taste the "centenary eggs". This delicacy can be found in most Asian grocery stores outside the region.
The traditions of national cuisines are sometimes very ambiguous: somewhere it is commonplace to eat a fried guinea pig for lunch, somewhere they prefer duck blood soup, and in some places they serve unsightly eggs that have lain in the ground for a couple of months. And nothing - people eat. True, for some who are used to eating cheeseburgers with cola, for example, this approach to the diet seems, to put it mildly, strange.
This is understandable - gastronomic traditions have been formed over the centuries in a certain territory, and travel far beyond its borders is often dangerous and unpleasant. Even today, for example, not everyone can cope with the natural disgust that acts as a kind of accident insurance in case of acquaintance with exotic food - it will not be very polite for a newcomer if he suddenly vomits at the hospitable table of foreign friends.
To try the "century-old eggs", which in appearance resemble some kind of alien jelly, you don't have to go to a remote Chinese village. You can just go to the supermarket and buy a package of these ugly, but, obviously, eggs loved by the Chinese. Several companies are engaged in the production of such products, but the largest of them is currently Shendan, whose employees seem to read CNN Go from time to time.
Otherwise, it is difficult to explain what happened literally a week after the publication of the list of disgusting food. Here's what happened: On July 6, the chairman of the board of directors of Shendan and three thousand of his subordinates filed a complaint with CNN, in which they demanded an apology for conferring the title of the most disgusting food in the world on "centenary eggs".
Among other things, the document says that the employees of the American television company made completely baseless and unscientific conclusions about the taste of the famous Chinese snack. And this circumstance indicates that the authors of the note about national dishes showed disrespect for foreign culture, and also demonstrated their ignorance and arrogance.
On the one hand, comrades from the Shendan egg company can be understood - who will like it if your favorite food is called utterly nasty, which cannot be eaten without tears in your eyes and the urge to vomit. But on the other hand, if you look at the situation a little differently, you can come to simple and obvious conclusions.
The private opinion of a person who has bought unusual food for the sake of a culinary experiment cannot be called ignorant and arrogant. Even if the author of a note about them had armed himself to the teeth with all sorts of theoretical calculations about the history of the origin of the recipe and the benefits of the product, before taking a sample from the "centenary eggs", he would hardly be able to oppose this knowledge of the reaction of his taste buds.
After all, CNN's citizen correspondent honestly described the sensation, and the vibrant emotions of the typical Westerner give more insight into the taste of an oriental product than the phrase “traditional, healthy dish with a rich history” does. After all, readers are waiting for the assessment, and not for what they themselves are able to read in the culinary encyclopedia.
In a word, before starting to write an angry complaint, the Chinese company should not forget that there are indeed many rather peculiar and strange dishes in the world and their popularity directly depends on the culinary preferences of not only different nationalities in general, but also of individual people in particular (so moreover, some of the inhabitants of China speak of the simplest and most familiar cheese to most people in the West in about the same way as the author of a short article in CNN Go - about "hundred-year-old eggs").
It is possible that among the readers of this text there will be one fearless fan of "hundred-year-old eggs" who subscribes them for big money directly from China and at the same time hates fried potatoes, calling it nothing but the most disgusting food in the world. So, a large producer of egg products could not have paid any attention to someone's "fu".
This was done (at least for now) by other manufacturers of those unusual dishes that appeared on the CNN list. In particular, Filipino woodworm larvae in a sauce of vinegar, salt and lime are located after the “centenary eggs”. Until it occurred to the Filipinos to write a letter to CNN with a complaint with an argument in the style of “I don’t count your stupid hot dog as food”.
There were no angry letters from those who specialize in the production of fermented soy chips (Indonesia), products from dog meat and offal (South Korea), fried spiders (Cambodia), fried cicadas (Thailand) and fried frogs (Philippines again). Because, probably, all these people have no time - they are busy with their own business, and crazy foreigners traveling around different countries and making big eyes at the sight of locusts in sweet sauce are not a decree for them.
And rightly so. Conflicts in which taste is the key are doomed to failure in advance. In the end, such clashes of opinion are about the same as an argument about the beauty of a particular shade of color. All the same, everyone will have their own opinion. And instead of quarreling over some nonsense, it is better to make yourself a huge sandwich with delicious cheese, well, or no less tasty "century-old eggs" - that's who you like.
Europeans often call these eggs "rotten", and the Chinese, on the contrary, "imperial". Why is there such a difference in perception? As you know, "a billion Chinese cannot be wrong" …