For the ancients, osmanthus was an exquisite perfume you could eat.
A shortened version of “Osmanthus is the Soul of Hangzhou Pastries!”
Originally published in Yong Dian Xin: Chinese Dim Sum is Wonderful!
CITIC Press Group, May 2022
[ Perfume ]
Among the ten most famous flowers,
osmanthus is special.
When it arrives, it drapes the whole Jiangnan region in a cloak of autumn perfume,
and on every nose alights a speck of gold,
turning into a beam of light.
When Qi Baishi painted it, he felt obliged to add a jade rabbit or a magical peach; when Pan Tianshou painted it, he wrote a very long inscription.
There were few like them. The world is full of ordinary folk like me, who find such efforts exhausting and lonely. Why did they bother? A piece of osmanthus cake stuffed into my mouth settled comfortably in my stomach – that was easy.
To be honest, the scent of osmanthus is really quite ordinary. The feeling is like a man blowing out a mouthful of smoke after an affair, mocking his own folly – when it comes down to it, are bodies anything more than a couple of lumps of flesh? People say osmanthus is uniquely fragrant, but these days famous perfumes are all about complex, deep “exotic notes.” Pure scents, without conceptual labels like “fresh spring water” or “open sky,” can only be defined as thin and tacky. Everything else is just one of the countless tiny ingredients listed on the bottom of a perfume bottle, too insignificant to matter. In a commercial society, it’s all a drop of something with a bit more flavour than plain water – why agonize over what it is? “Osmanthus fragrance” especially seems common and cheap, even compared to flowers with names you can’t read.
I no longer get excited at the sight of osmanthus. Yet, without osmanthus, I feel a sense of loss. It’s strange.
Just like when I see the news this year that “osmanthus will come late to Hangzhou,” I can’t help thinking of the tiao-tou gao wrapped in plastic film on market stalls from my childhood. I still yearn for the one with a little extra osmanthus, because my grandma always said osmanthus is good for children’s eyes. In his Qing dynasty book Suixiju Yinshipu, Wang Shixiong wrote just a few short lines: “Osmanthus is pungent and warm. It removes bad odors, awakens the stomach, and transforms phlegm. It can be steamed for syrups, infused in liquor, preserved with salt or sugar, or used in pastry fillings – its taste is delicious and pleasing to the mouth. It can also be steamed to make tea, or its oil applied to brighten hair.” A thousand years of eating osmanthus is contained in those words, so fragrant that I can’t bear to let go.
People tend to forget those important flavours of the past, but they well up again from the heart, brought out by a rush of saliva.
Mention osmanthus, and I can’t help drooling. When it comes to eating osmanthus, there’s a history that’s sweet, fragrant, and utterly “artful.”
The human sense of smell is a “long taste,” while the sense of taste is a “short taste” – they complete each other. The Song dynasty marked the peak of ancient Chinese cuisine, largely because people then were obsessed with fragrance.
Song poet Deng Su compared the scent of osmanthus to ambergris, the legendary saliva of dragons, produced in the stomachs of sperm whales and extremely rare. In his poem “Muxi,” he wrote: “A fresh wind one day arrives from the heavenly palace; the world’s ambergris dares not boast its fragrance” – outright partiality. Yang Wanli backed this up in his “Burning Incense”: “Having tasted the flavours of mountain and forest all my life, I cannot resist this fragrance’s special charm. I call my boy to quickly fetch steamed sweet osmanthus, and then act like a scholar of true wealth.” He also decisively ranked osmanthus above the world’s number one scent, ambergris.
Agarwood was drinkable, and the elegant ancients began to do high-end blending in tea – a kind of “Infernal Affairs” crossover between tea ceremony and incense ceremony. Camphor, musk, and agarwood all found their way into tea, giving rise to “fragrant tea” as a trend. I’ve never tried it, but just imagining it makes me feel I’d be suffocated by the aroma. Of course, fragrance isn’t always better the stronger it is. Truly, osmanthus tea is much more amiable and charming on the tongue.
The ancients were clever, gradually mastering the “sense of proportion” for flower teas. They even figured out that “too many flowers make it overly fragrant, too few make it lack fragrance, and neither attains perfection. Three parts tea to one part flower is just right.” The Song-era Tiaoxie Leipian records in detail the method for scenting tea using “sweet osmanthus” as an example: “For sweet osmanthus flowers, pick off the stems, bases, dust, and insects. Use a ceramic jar, layering tea and flowers alternately until full. Tie it securely with paper and bamboo leaves, then place the jar in a pot and steam it over water. Take it out, let it cool, wrap it in paper, and dry over a fire for storage. Other flowers can be processed similarly.” From this we can see that osmanthus tea was the pioneer of tea-scenting techniques.
In winter, when Hangzhou locals entertain guests, they always brew a cup of osmanthus tea – either Longjing osmanthus or Jiuqu Hongmei. Since the way of incense and the way of tea are already “part of each other,” it seems perfectly natural nowadays to sip osmanthus tea while breathing in the fragrance of osmanthus blossoms. But hold on! The “artfully contrarian” ancients would cast a historical eye-roll – in their world, that was vulgar!
For ancient literati, “not seeing the flower, only smelling its fragrance was superior.”
One special hobby of Ming and Qing scholars was building gardens. I mentioned earlier the famous Qi Baishi and Pan Tianshou; both had a connection with a garden, and both used The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting as their “primer.” That manual came from the “Mustard Seed Garden,” where you could sit on the ground and admire the flowers of the four seasons. Now overgrown and desolate, it was the home of literary giant Li Yu. Li Yu crowdfunded the construction of his garden, saying, “It can’t accommodate three lairs, only a single mound,” which is why it was called “Mustard Seed Garden,” to stress its small size. This garden was not only where Li Yu entertained friends, staged plays, painted, and did calligraphy, but also where he printed and sold books. It was under his impetus that popular titles of the day like Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and The Plum in the Golden Vase really gained fame. “Though the mustard seed is tiny, it contains the Sumeru.” I imagine that no matter how small the garden was, there must have been a clump of osmanthus bushes.
But beneath the osmanthus bushes anywhere in the world, it wasn’t necessarily a good place to lounge in the shade. What about brewing a cup of the sweet osmanthus-sesame-smoked bamboo shoot tea from The Plum in the Golden Vase, or the eight-treasure green bean osmanthus tea? No chance! The late Ming/early Qing master Zhang Dai recorded in Recollections of Tao’an Dream a story about an osmanthus tree behind the residence of Zhu Wenyi, showcasing an almost exasperating level of “artfulness.” He wrote that the tree was quite large, “its trunk as thick as a measuring scoop, its branches and leaves thickly shading about a mu of land, enough for thirty or forty guests to sit beneath it.” But the owner deliberately built no viewing spot: “no pavilion, no house, no terrace, no railing, no stonework – he left it abandoned among the fences.” Moreover, both idle visitors and the owner himself were forbidden to go in: “When it bloomed, he allowed no one to view it, and the owner also stopped his steps and would not go, letting it bloom and wither on its own.” This attitude was almost like treating osmanthus as an incense path for meditation, blending the human with the celestial. In the minds of the ancients, there was also an osmanthus tree in heaven, said to be five hundred zhang tall and growing so fast that it would not fit in the celestial palace unless chopped down. The Jade Emperor ordered Wu Gang, who had made an error during his spiritual cultivation, to chop it every day. But as he chopped, the tree healed simultaneously, never to be felled – a metaphor for the Chan Buddhist idea of emptiness and eternity.
Zhang Dai was a huge fan of Hangzhou long ago. In Hangzhou, I can understand this “Chan” – literati and monks had plenty of interactions here since ancient times. The trend of capturing osmanthus fragrance was, in theory, started by Hangzhou’s monks. Wu Zimu of the Song dynasty records in Mengliang Lu, Chapter 18, that the area around the “Ancient Incense Path” was actually a major production area for osmanthus trees: “Sweet osmanthus comes in red, yellow, and white, extremely fragrant and charming. It abounds at Tianzhu Mountain, and at Changqiao Qingle Garden there are dozens of trees; scholars often go to enjoy this extraordinary scent.”
In fact, the Ming aesthete Wen Zhenheng had already given pointers on how to appreciate osmanthus in his Treatise on Superfluous Things. He was a bit more worldly than Zhang Dai: “When the bush osmanthus is in bloom, it truly deserves the name ‘fragrant grotto.’ You should set aside two mu of land, plant various kinds together, and build a pavilion among them. Do not hang signs like ‘Heavenly Fragrance’ or ‘Little Mountain,’ and do not mix in other trees. The ground beneath should be flat as a palm, so clean you wouldn’t want to sleep on it, and when the flowers fall, gather them to make food.” What does that mean? Osmanthus is best appreciated with eyes closed and mouth open – don’t go inside, and definitely don’t attract anyone’s attention!
Nowadays we don’t care whether that gleaming cup of osmanthus latte is sprinkled with fallen petals from a park, likely sprayed with pesticide. As long as we strike a pose and snap a picture, we’ve embraced autumn. But our Jiangnan ancestors wanted not just cleanliness and hygiene, but a heart full of love and awe. Only then does the osmanthus in the heart truly smell sweet.
Osmanthus Liquor and Osmanthus Wine
The definition of “gui” in old texts is somewhat ambiguous – the character can refer to the laurel of the camphor family or the osmanthus of the olive family. But winemakers all know osmanthus wine is delicious. I haven’t drunk much of it, but as a kid I could never get enough of the sweet fermented rice dessert with added osmanthus. Even as a grown-up, just eating sticky rice balls in osmanthus-fermented rice wine would make my cheeks flush and my eyes grow dreamy.
The Song people had no love for “cloud-like hair, flower-like face, swaying golden steps, warm in hibiscus tent to pass the spring night.” Emperor Taizong of Tang liked plump women, but the Song aesthetic, like a slender-necked plum vase, was far more delicate than Yang Guifei.
The beauty of recognizing a woman by her scent lies in a perfectly timed tipsiness – blurring to the point of fading, achieving “unity of heaven and man.” Flower tea alone was not intoxicating enough; only flower wine would do!
To create a mood of “wandering in a field of blossoms,” the Song people were particular about having fragrance even inside their bed curtains. Hence the elegant decoration of a vase by the pillow. In autumn, that meant sweet osmanthus. The poet Huang Geng described it: “Fresh scent pierces the poet’s bones, on my half bed I sleep in autumn’s dream, a fairy.” “Fragrance in the bed curtains” was not just a floral arrangement; once the fleeting flower season passed, dried osmanthus could perfume winter nights with its refined elegance. In the Song poet Zhu Dunru’s lyric to “Buddhist Dancers – Autumn Wind Blue on the Banana Leaves”: “Autumn wind blue on the banana leaves, evening drizzle wets the tassels. Newly scented, the sweet osmanthus sinks deep. Late fragrance in the little curtained bed.” At such a moment, “dewily fragrant and perspiring” would have been perfectly apt.
Han Xizai of the Southern Tang – the semi-naked protagonist of the famous painting Night Revels of Han Xizai, with his wives and concubines tangled across the bed – went even further. He had long proposed the “Five Proper Ways to Burn Incense Facing Flowers,” saying, “When facing flowers to burn incense, the incense should differ with the flower.” It was also he who invented the provocative practice of “burning incense while drinking flower wine in front of the flowers.” He believed that camphor incense paired with autumn-blooming sweet osmanthus, plus a lovely woman nestled tipsy in one’s arms, produced a matchless effect. The Southern Song ‘male version of Li Ziqi’ – Lin Hong – reveals a shared taste in his Simple Foods of the Mountain Hermit: “Clear energy in the vase stirs poetic mood, the ancient tripod’s lingering petals fog the wine’s fragrance.” When drinking and making merry, one should have osmanthus in the vase and also burn osmanthus incense in the censer.
Yet, osmanthus wine was not their invention. It had been drunk as far back as the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. Qu Yuan wrote in the “Nine Songs”: “Steamed orchid meats with iris for wrappings, make offering of osmanthus wine and pepper broth.” This ceremonial wine was made from osmanthus, also anciently called gui-sweet, osmanthus vinegar, or gui-thick. Kong Pingzhong’s Tan Yuan says: “Gui-thick is probably today’s method of brewing osmanthus wine. During the Wei dynasty, envoys came from Pinsi country carrying vessels with a cream-like liquid, which was gui-thick; drinking it would grant a lifespan of a thousand years.”
Su Shi, who adored Hangzhou, wrote a “Eulogy on Osmanthus Wine.” The ancients considered osmanthus the chief of the hundred herbs, truly strengthening the body, so wine made from it could “give longevity for a thousand years.” The Simin Yueling records that in the Han dynasty, osmanthus wine was a fine offering to deities and ancestors. After the rites, juniors would toast their elders with it, conveying wishes for long life.
Gradually, osmanthus wine moved from altars and ancestral shrines into social gatherings. The Book of Han: Treatise on Rites and Music says: “Respecting osmanthus wine, feasting the eight regions.” Many feudal emperors even gave it as a gift to ministers. Literati across the ages praised it unrestrainedly; Bai Juyi wrote a line admiring osmanthus wine. By the Song, osmanthus seemed to have attained the status of a national flower. One can feel this in Emperor Gaozong’s “Inscribed on a Fan Picture of Cinnabar Osmanthus for His Ministers”: “From the moon palace moved to the sun’s palace it’s planted, drawing a light red across the face. Fitting to bear rain and dew amid cloud and mist, its loyal heart opens one by one for you.” Xin Qiji celebrated it with “dyeing the whole world fragrant,” possibly hinting at his aspiration to “benefit the whole world when in a position of power.”
The national liquor of ancient times was not Moutai – perhaps it was osmanthus wine.
An Osmanthus Perfume You Can Drink
In ancient times, not only food and medicine were of the same origin, but medicine, food, and fragrance shared the same roots.
With the belief that “fragrance dispels dampness and pestilence” and osmanthus’ own effects of “soothing the liver and regulating qi, refreshing the spleen and clearing filth, brightening the eyes, and moistening the throat,” the ancients were obsessed with the benefits of osmanthus fragrance. In Xu Yang’s scroll painting “Suzhou’s Bustling Scenes”, by the Xie Bridge in Mudu, there is a tea shop with a sign reading “Osmanthus Syrup.”
That Jia Baoyu drank osmanthus perfume to nourish his body is only logical. Transporting ourselves back to Chapter 34 of Dream of the Red Chamber, after Baoyu is beaten, Lady Wang sends a maid to bring him two bottles of “fragrant syrup.” “When Xiren looked, she saw two small glass bottles about three inches tall with spiral silver stoppers, each labeled on yellow paper with ‘Sweet Osmanthus Clear Dew.’” She laughed, saying: “Such precious things! How much can such tiny bottles hold?” Lady Wang said: “That is tribute item. Didn’t you see the yellow paper? Take good care of it for him, don’t let it be wasted.”
On ancient Valentine’s Day, perhaps girls loved osmanthus even more. The famous Qing dynasty cookbook Tiaodingji mentions that roses and osmanthus “even when pounded to extract juice, their fragrance does not disperse – other flowers cannot do this.” Before the Chinese learned that roses represent love, osmanthus was reigning supreme! Mengliang Lu clearly records that every summer and autumn at the night markets of Lin’an, “osmanthus beads of fragrance” were always among the hot-selling items peddlers offered.
And that “Osmanthus Clear Dew” in the novel came from the remarkable woman Dong Xiaowan of Qinhuai, a native of Rugao. In a poem she wrote in regular script at age 17, she wrote: “Such a fine mood on this eighth or ninth day of autumn, drinking pure fragrance beneath the osmanthus branches” – evidence of her enchantment with this scent.
The Qing dynasty memoir Yingmeian Yiyu details Dong Xiaowan’s recipe for making flower sugar syrup: “Brew malt sugar into a syrup, mix with salted plums. Any colored, fragrant flower buds should be picked when just blooming and soaked. After a year, the fragrance and color are unchanged, red and fresh as if just plucked. The flower juice merges with the liquid; it bursts in the mouth and pervades the nose with extraordinary fragrance and beauty, far from the ordinary.” Her flower sugar syrup is exactly the method for osmanthus jam, matching the account in Tiaodingji. It starts in April or May of the previous year with picking green plums, removing the pits and mashing them with salt to make “plum sauce.” Then when osmanthus blooms in autumn, you wash and pickle them. It takes a full year to achieve that transcendent flavour.
Nowadays, if a Hangzhou child happens to have a devout streak, early on the morning of a crucial exam they’ll go to Lingyin Temple to offer the first incense, then eat a Dingsheng Cake to “settle” the heart, and top it off with a piece of Zhuangyuan Cake for extra steadiness. But in the past, people ate “Osmanthus Cake” (Guihua Gao) for good luck.
In his Southern Song work Simple Foods of the Mountain Hermit, Lin Hong records a cake called “Guanghan Cake”: “Pick osmanthus blooms, remove the green stems, sprinkle with liquorice water, grind with rice, and steam into cakes. In years of the imperial examinations, scholars would all make such flat cakes and exchange them, taking the idiom ‘Guanghan High-Achiever’ as a play on words.”
My mother loved to buy me all kinds of osmanthus cakes. The first time she took me to “Tianxiang Lou,” a time-honoured restaurant serving Hangzhou cuisine since 1927, originally named Wujin Tianxiang Lou, I was still innocent, without the cocky slant of the mouth one sees on so-called food critics. The first time I ate osmanthus nian gao, that soft, white body stretched in my mouth with an elasticity one would only expect from a contortionist. While enduring the scalding “body heat” between my fingers and lips, I pulled on that “white fat arm” of the contortionist, watching it almost tremble.
That osmanthus nian gao was alive. The soul of the candied osmanthus gave it wings, flying straight into my little heart, dissolving there, unforgettable ever since. If I hadn’t been in kindergarten, perhaps I could have discovered then that in Tang poet Song Zhiwen’s five-character regulated verse “Lingyin Temple,” the line “Osmanthus seeds fall amid the moon, heavenly fragrance drifts beyond the clouds” – those two words “heavenly fragrance” exactly describe that feeling. Later, a restaurant in Taiwan also named “Tianxiang Lou” – perhaps because osmanthus sugar was hard to come by – changed the fermented rice balls from osmanthus to orange-scented. The one in Hangzhou has now changed beyond recognition. Yet every time I pass by, I still have a thrill.
The traditional method in Jiangnan for making osmanthus sugar is a bit like how farmers pickle vegetables – except the “salt” is something much more refined: plum brine. The osmanthus flowers are rubbed and mixed with the brine, covered with a layer of palm leaves and a layer of bamboo strips, weighted down with a heavy stone, and left to ferment in a sealed jar for one or two months. Then the flowers are taken out, rinsed clean of the brine, and drained. They are poured into white sugar and pounded with a pestle in a mortar until they become a yellow-brown sugar paste, in which no single flower can be seen – only the fragrance can be smelled. After drying, it is stored in a lime jar.
How could the ancients, who preserved flowers into candy, not love osmanthus cake?
In olden days, the refined used “candied osmanthus sugar,” but today, simplified, the most common flavouring in Hangzhou’s glutinous rice pastries is simply the easy-preserved “dried osmanthus.” When I was little, market pastry vendors also liked to source their goods from Jiangnanchun, a venerable Hangzhou pastry shop that’s been open for 63 years. Many Hangzhou locals still eat these soft-and-chewy childhood-memory pastries for breakfast. The shop’s philosophy is exactly like the method for lard cake in Yuan Mei’s Qing dynasty Recipes from the Sui Garden: “Mix pure glutinous rice flour with lard, steam in a dish until done, crush rock sugar and mix into the flour, then steam again and cut with a knife once done.” The only difference is the various fillings. Tiao-tou gao , three-colour cake , black rice cake , and the limited edition Chongyang cake are still enduring hits. While classic old-school flavours like honey cake and mint cake remain beloved by many elders. At the famous old-brand Hangzhou restaurant Zhiweiguan, the tiao-tou gao is filled with fine red bean paste, while Jiangnanchun’s version uses bean paste with sesame – both adorned with osmanthus on the outside. Then there’s Yujiuxuan, which has been around for at least twenty years; their osmanthus steamed sponge cake (with its moist, winey fragrance) and their osmanthus rice cake (with the dry, nutty scent of osmanthus) are a tender pair of adversaries on many a weight-watcher’s journey.
Name: Mint Rice Cake
Brand: Yujiuxuan · Jiangnan Pastries
Elderly folk dote on this one. Small, a single piece – the osmanthus on top echoes the osmanthus fragrance in a cup of winter’s Jiuqu Hongmei tea. Mint is exceptional at cutting through richness and sweetness, especially with the hot teas of Jiangnan; sometimes you just need a bite of this tea pastry for relief.
Name: Tiao-tou Gao
Ingredients: Rice flour, white sugar, bean paste
Brand: Jiangnanchun
Tiao-tou gao is mildly sweet, with a red bean paste filling plus sesame, wrapped in glutinous rice dough. In my childhood, there was also a version with pure bean paste – that one was delicious too.
Name: Three-Colour Cake
Ingredients: Rice flour, white sugar, bean paste, red yeast rice powder, osmanthus
Brand: Jiangnanchun
This three-colour cake was my favourite glutinous pastry as a kid. The middle layer has rice flour actually mixed with red bean paste and a little sesame for extra flavour; the right side is rice cake made with red yeast; the white left section has a touch of osmanthus blended in.
Name: Ningbo Steamed Sponge Cake
Brand: Yujiuxuan · Jiangnan Pastries
This is called Ningbo steamed sponge cake. Very low in sweetness, it’s fermented with rice wine, soft and delicious.
Name: Osmanthus Rice Cake
Ingredients: Rice flour, white sugar, water, brown sugar, osmanthus, sesame, peanuts, maltose
Brand: Yujiuxuan · Jiangnan Pastries
This osmanthus rice cake’s filling includes brown sugar, peanuts, white sesame, and osmanthus. It eats a bit like yun pian gao or qian shi gao on the outside, chewy, then the middle is soft and fragrant, the lingering scent exhaling through the nose. This comes close to the “cinnabar osmanthus” recorded in Gao Lian’s Ming dynasty Four Discourses on Health: “Pick flowers, sprinkle with liquorice water, grind with rice into flour and make cakes. The pure fragrance fills the cheeks.”
Name: Honey Cake
Ingredients: Rice flour, white sugar, candied fruit strips (or rose jam)
Brand: Jiangnanchun
This honey cake features red and green candied shreds and pumpkin seeds, plus osmanthus. Low in sweetness, it’s a classic crowd-pleaser. Its recipe resembles the Hundred-Fruit Cake loved by old Yuan Mei: “The best are sold from the northern pass of Hangzhou. With glutinous rice flour, lots of pine nuts and walnuts, and no diced orange peel – that’s most wonderful. Its sweetness is not from honey or sugar, yet lingers on the tongue. It cannot be replicated at home.”
Name: Chongyang Chestnut Cake
Ingredients: Rice flour, white sugar, chestnuts, osmanthus, red and green candied shreds
Brand: Jiangnanchun
Chongyang Chestnut Cake is a seasonal special. The boss said they stop making it after November. Candied local chestnuts are the highlight, sweet. The cake body has red and green shreds and osmanthus, but the cake itself isn’t sweet – perfect for the elderly and people like me who pretend to be on a diet. This cake is a far cry from the chestnut cake in Recipes from the Sui Garden: “Boil chestnuts until extremely soft, mix pure glutinous rice flour with sugar and steam into cakes, topped with melon seeds and pine nuts. This is a snack for the Chongyang Festival.”
Name: Black Rice Cake
Ingredients: Glutinous rice, white sugar, candied osmanthus, dark rice leaf juice
Brand: Jiangnanchun
The black rice cake contains red and green shreds and osmanthus. The black rice is actually the “clean essence rice” from Simple Foods of the Mountain Hermit, its colour derived from dying with the leaves of the oriental blueberry. It was eaten by ancient monks during their spiritual practice, and was also a seasonal food for the summer solstice. Thanks to good preservation techniques now, you can eat it all year round.
During Hangzhou’s lingering late summer heat – the “autumn tiger” – there’s a romantic yet uneasy spell called “osmanthus steaming” (guihua zheng), also known as “sweet osmanthus steaming.” It’s exactly when osmanthus flowers bloom: indoors, dampness rises as in the rainy season, while outside the weather feels stifling and hot. The Qingjia Lu records: “People commonly call cliff osmanthus ‘sweet osmanthus.’ There are early and late varieties; those blooming at the autumn equinox are called early cassia, and at cold dew, late cassia. Right before flowering, there will be several days of humid, hot weather like sweltering summer, called ‘sweet osmanthus steaming.’”
The moment I hear that name, all the creases in my heart smooth out.
Each early dewy morning during “osmanthus steaming” is exactly when farmers making osmanthus sugar in Hangzhou have their keenest eyes. They use bamboo poles to strike the blossoms – which must be half-closed – and do it before sunrise, otherwise the fragrance dissipates. To fix the scent and preserve the colour, the age-old method uses “plum brine”: “Salting green plums makes a most wonderful brine. When making candied fruits, adding a little of this juice prevents spoiling and keeps the colour bright.” In essence, you cook down green plums in April or May and salt them, letting them pickle until the osmanthus blooms. If your love for osmanthus is deep, you might also try “Heavenly Fragrance Decoction”: When white sweet osmanthus is in full bloom, beat the flowers down with a stick in the early morning dew. Catch them in a cotton cloth, pick out stems and bases, place in a clean vessel, pound in a new basin into a mud-like paste, press out the juice, and keep it. For each catty of flowers, add one liang of liquorice and ten salted plums, pound into cakes, seal in a clay jar, and serve by infusing in boiling water.”
Lin Hong in Simple Foods of the Mountain Hermit says to steam the flowers slightly in a rice steamer and then sun-dry them to use as incense: “Pick the flowers, steam briefly, then sun-dry to use as incense. While reciting poetry or drinking, burn them in an ancient tripod for a particularly pure mood.” Imagine this whole fragrant preservation process happening in that misty, celestial weather – it truly is an experience of breathing in osmanthus incense and bathing in osmanthus fragrance.
The thousand-year fragrance of Jiangnan’s osmanthus teas, wines, and pastries is, in truth, a history of love declared for this flower. “Donggua,” an old Taiwanese craftsman who hand-builds vinyl record machines, once told me that to appreciate vinyl, you have to place yourself back in that era. The digital age lacks that “shushing” sound; precise, beautiful fidelity is something to be proud of, yes, but it also has a boring side.
Forget the memories on the tip of your tongue, and we become orphans growing up in a food desert. Those alluring flavours of the past survive through a heart connection that says “beauty lies in its rarity,” quietly touching us.
Passing by the old lady’s pastry stall in the wet market, I will still pick the tiao-tou gao with a little extra osmanthus on it.
What osmanthus pastry do you like?
“Dull and light yellow, thy nature soft,
Away from men, thy scent alone stays.
Why need you slender green or deep red?
Of flowers you are the first in grace.”
— Li Qingzhao, “Partridge in the Sky · Osmanthus”
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