Bingfen jelly with brown-sugar syrup 冰粉

Bingfen jelly with brown-sugar syrup (冰粉) is a cool, soft, springy jelly set from plant seeds and eaten mostly sweet. It is popular across southwest China, and the Sichuan Legal Daily (四川法治报) counts it among the traditional summer snacks, alongside liang xia (凉虾, rice-paste "shrimps") and liang gao (凉糕, chilled rice cake), that appear on Chengdu (成都) streets when the hot weather arrives.

How it is made

The jelly is the pectin rubbed out of the seeds of the shoo-fly plant (假酸浆), which sets once it is out of the seeds. Bingfen can also be made from a ready-made bingfen powder, but seasoned eaters, the Sichuan Legal Daily notes, insist that hand-rubbed bingfen is more authentic than the powder version.

How it is eaten

The jelly is served in chilled pieces, with brown-sugar or white-sugar syrup poured over it and toppings such as crushed hawthorn, ciba rice cake (糍粑) and glutinous rice balls. Brown sugar used to be its only partner. Today's bowls may add crushed ice, laozao fermented rice (醪糟), small tangyuan, coconut milk, crushed peanuts, taro balls and fruit, with rose, osmanthus, mango or lemon sauces. At one shop in Pengzhou (彭州), the Sichuan Legal Daily writer found small pieces of ciba lightly fried to a thin crisp skin and served with the brown-sugar syrup.

Where it comes from

A story retold by the Sichuan Legal Daily credits the invention to a young woman in Pengshan (彭山) who happened to wash shoo-fly seeds in water and found that the pectin rubbed out of them set and was edible. Bingfen already appears as a hot-weather food in the late-Qing book Chengdu Tonglan (成都通览) by Fu Chongju (傅崇矩), which lists it with liang xia among foods sold only when the weather is hot.