Life.Culture.Discovery.

Why Chinese cuisine beats French cuisine for variety and how a Chinese cook makes sure to give a chicken a worthy death

The essence of Chinese cooking is the blending of flavours, and the variety of combinations is practically inexhaustible, philosopher Lin Yutang writes

If we kill a chicken and don’t cook it properly we haven’t honoured its death, he also says in the introduction to a classic cookbook by his wife and daughter

Reading Time:3 minutes

A chicken dish at a Hong Kong private kitchen. “If a chicken has been killed and is not cooked properly, that chicken has died in vain,” writes Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang in his introduction to a classic cookbook by his wife and youngest daughter, Secrets of Chinese Cooking. Photo: SCMP/Samantha Sin

Published: 2:30am, 8 Nov 2021

I suspect that more people will recognise the name of Lin Yutang than those of the authors of Secrets of Chinese Cooking (1960). Born in Fujian province in 1895, Lin – inventor (of Ming Kwai Chinese typewriter fame), writer, translator and philosopher – wrote the book’s essay, “The Art of Cooking and Dining in Chinese”.

The authors Lin Tsuifeng (née Liao) and Lin Hsiangju were his wife and youngest daughter, respectively, and wrote other books about Chinese cuisine (Hsiangju was also a pathologist who worked at the University of Hong Kong).

The authors are an inspiration for those who think Chinese cooking is too difficult, or worry that they can’t get the right ingredients to make “authentic” Chinese food. In the foreword, they write: “This book is the result of many years spent away from China, during which we not only had to do our own cooking, but also cook without the ingredients which are common in China and rare abroad.

“Cooking, which at first had seemed a drudgery, gradually became a joy and an absorbing hobby. Wherever we went, we managed to have simple and nourishing Chinese meals. The technique of Chinese cooking can be applied to almost any ingredients, and though we sometimes longed for some irreplaceable Chinese food […] the bulk of our dishes were made from things that could be had at the market […]

The cover of Lin Tsuifeng (née Liao) and Lin Hsiangju’s book. Photo: Winson Wong

“By merely looking through this book the reader should perceive that cooking Chinese food is not a matter of putting in exotic things like edible fungus, but rather that it is a technique. We cook to bring out the texture and flavour of food. The methods of preparing and cooking the ingredients, which are different from those of Western cooking, are designed to bring out the best in a particular cut of meat, a vegetable, or a fish. Chinese cooks have always tried to adapt the method of preparation to the food, and not the food to the method.

“This is, of course, the logical way to cook, if the individuality of each ingredient is to be emphasised.”