Xilu Layered Thick Soup 西鲁肉
Xilu Layered Thick Soup is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
Xilu Layered Thick Soup (西鲁肉) is a Yilan (宜蘭) banquet dish built around napa cabbage and a topping of fried egg. It also belongs to home cooking and holiday tables, with variations shaped by ingredients and individual cooks.
Ingredients
Yilan's official tourism guide describes a cabbage-based broth with carrots, shiitake mushrooms and wood-ear mushrooms. Golden fried egg are laid on top and absorb the soup. The resulting dish combines the vegetables, egg topping and a thick soup base.
Where it comes from
Lanyang Museum (蘭陽博物館) notes that duck eggs were used when duck raising was widespread in Yilan; chicken eggs came into use later. It places the dish both in restaurants and in household cooking at festivals. The museum presents one origin story as a tradition rather than a settled fact: in poorer times, fried egg supplied a sense of abundance when meat was unavailable.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-30. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Xi lu rou, a mixed meat and vegetable potage associated with Yilan · 西鲁肉，宜兰风味什锦羹Photo: bryan... from Taipei, Taiwan · CC BY-SA 2.0 · taken 2015-11-22Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
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