From Fuzhou and Ningde, Fujian. Popular in Fuzhou diaspora (Singapore, Malaysia, NYC).
Pin · Fuzhou
- OriginFuzhou · Min · Fuzhounese
Fuzhou meat swallow
扁肉燕
SLAArchaeological or primary source, with a legend attachedFamily A · East Asian wheat-wrapper
- First record
- 1917 · Modern & global
- Fold
- Wonton, trailing skin
- Cooked
- Boiled or steamed. Served in broth. Taiping yan (with duck eggs, a pun on "peace") is served at weddings, New Year and banquets
- Wrapper
- Potato or starch doughFilled; savory; meat-based wrapper
- Filling
- Wrapper (燕皮 yanpi) is lean pork-leg meat pounded with wooden mallets and mixed with sweet-potato starch into paper-thin sheets. Filling: pork, sometimes fish, water chestnut, mushroom
- Cooked
- Boiled or steamed. Served in broth. Taiping yan (with duck eggs, a pun on "peace") is served at weddings, New Year and banquets
- Size
- About 4 cm across
Not known yet We don’t yet have a written story or a recipe for Fuzhou meat swallow. What we do have is below, with its sources.
Where
Open the map →
Evidence
Well established. An archaeological find or a primary source backs it. Part of its origin story is legend.
We list 5 sources: 1 primary or archaeological, 2 dated texts, 1 secondary, 1 legend. How grading works.
First record 清稗類鈔, 1916–17, entry 肉燕: a Fujian speciality with a beaten-pork skin (A); first found
Strongest sources
- A
清稗類鈔, 飲食類 (Wikisource transcription, section 107)
Entry 肉燕: '肉燕者，閩人特殊之肴也。取豬肉之至精者，以木擊之，使糜爛如泥，和以米粉，搯之成薄皮，色甚白，曰肉燕。復切碎之，裹以豬肉，煮食。'
- D
'Wang Shitong popularized yanpi in the first decades of the 20th century by drying it, allowing it to be stored for long periods' - cited to 福建省志 vol. 24 (福建人民出版社, 1992), p. 430. The gazetteer itself was not opened.
- D
Publication data for the above: compiled by Xu Ke (1869-1928); 'published by the Commercial Press in 1916 in 48 volumes'.
Show all 5 sources
- S
福州同利肉燕制作技艺 (China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network; brand-site summaries)
Shop tradition: 同利肉燕 'founded in Guangxu 2 (1876)' in Fuzhou, four or five generations; its craft is a Fujian provincial intangible heritage item (inheritor 陈君凡 appears in a provincial list on Wikisource). The ihchina.cn page failed to load; claim read only in search summaries.
- L
Existing atlas note (anecdotal attributions)
A chef named the dish 'flat-meat swallow' for its swallow shape; Wikipedia's 'invented 1234' is unsourced.
Family A
