Huai'an Wenlou Soup Bun, to be precise, is a Wenlou crab yellow soup bun, named after the Wenlou from the ancient town under the river in Huai'an City. Wenlou was built in the light years of the Qing Dynasty, climbing the Wenlou, and the Quxianglou in the ancient town of Bianxiao Lake across the water, you can watch the lake light and water color, but also accompanied by food, often for the literati inkers gathering place, so it got the name of "Wenlou".
Huai'an City under the river under the ancient town of Huzui Street street entrance
Huai'an century-old shop wenlou is located in the ancient town of Huaxiang Lane under the river
The Wenlou shop in Flower Lane in the ancient town of Hexia
Hexia ancient town century-old shop wenlou
Wenlou's representative delicacy is Wenlou crab yellow soup bun, its skin is as thin as paper, and the filling is all made of soup, which is a veritable "soup" bun. Moreover, the soup filling selection is fine, the process is unique, "the skin is thin but not broken, the mouth is full and not overflowing", the soup is thick, the taste is delicious, the skin and filling are unique, so it is famous and famous in Beijing. There is a famous rumor that praises: "Osmanthus flowers are fragrant chrysanthemum yellow, Wenlou soup bun people compete to taste, thin-skinned crab fresh filling is delicious, into the throat suddenly feel refreshed." ”
Huai'an famous food Wenlou crab yellow soup bun
Many historical and cultural celebrities have very good memories of the delicious wenlou soup buns, such as Zhou Enlai once recalled his childhood time through the River Wen canal in Huai'an City to take a boat to the river to taste the Wenlou crab yellow soup buns. Xin Di, a famous poet whose ancestral home is Huai'an, when tasting Wenlou soup buns, once kou zhan seven "crab powder soup buns": "Frozen meat gelatin mixed with crab yellow, thin skin open a bag of soup." The steamer grabs the injury-proof hand, and the teeth and tongue calmly taste it. ”
As the so-called, the soup bun is named after the building, the building is passed down because of the soup bun, and although the wenlou of the ancient town under the river has ups and downs, it has become a century-old shop with a long reputation after nearly two hundred years.
The view of Xiao Lake next to the ancient town under the river
A corner of Xiao Lake
However, in recent years, it is often seen on the Internet that tourists around the world complain about Wenlou soup buns, the most typical and most heartfelt sentence is that when you go to the ancient town river, you will regret not eating Wenlou soup buns, and you will regret it even more when you eat it.
The reason why today's tourists have such a feeling, I think, there are subjective and objective reasons, the younger generation of operators from the hard-won brand is not cherished enough is the main reason, the service attitude is not good and aggravates the customer's bad experience, secondly, there are some objective reasons, for example, as the main ingredient of the crab yellow soup bun crab itself is no longer delicious; for example, the modern people's work rhythm, labor costs and the development of modern cooking utensils, etc. have been different from the past, may no longer be as good as before, the skin, The filling is carefully crafted, which will reduce the quality and taste degradation; moreover, modern people eat abundantly and often eat a lot, so they support the intestines and stomachs, and the sweetness is fatty, even if it is delicious, it is difficult to taste the taste of the past.
When I was a child, I vaguely remembered going to Wenlou to taste crab yellow soup buns, and I seemed to have some memories of the delicacy. Wen G catastrophe, hundreds of industries withered, Wen Lou is also unable to escape the doom, was closed for many years, about 2000, in the adjacent river under the Huai'an Beimen Street on a simple decoration of the two-story building and hung up the Wen Lou soup bun signboard, I was invited to eat once, the taste of the soup bun and the taste of the experience have not been as good as the past, people do not feel that there is a sigh of the past. Later, Wenlou reopened at the old site of Huaxiang in the ancient town of Hexia, and I no longer had the interest to taste delicious food. Later, I also went to the longpao town of Nanjing Liuhe twice to taste the famous dragon robe crab yellow soup bun, and I no longer let me have the happiness and satisfaction of leaving a full mouth on the cheek, and even felt that whether it was Wenlou crab yellow soup bun or dragon robe crab yellow soup bun, it was not worthy of the name. It's like eating crabs the same way, and now compared with when I was a child, my experience and feeling of delicious food have fallen far behind.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="14" > miscellaneous theories and ramblings of the crab yellow soup bun in Wenlou</h1>
"Frozen glue" made soup buns: I remember seeing a joke on the Internet that foreigners saw Chinese foods such as buns and tangyuan, and looked carefully but did not understand how the filling was wrapped into the dough (of course, this is just a joke, foreigners should not be so stupid), I think, if you see the soup buns, it is more difficult to wrap the soup into the dough, wouldn't it be more confusing for them. So, how exactly is the soup filled? In fact, there is a scientific concept involved, I have mentioned the concept of gel in the previous headline article (see the article can click on the blue word behind: cloud breeze gently talk about the wind and clouds of science in life - from the taste of meat rounds"), that is, the liquid is cured in the network formed by the solid, there are many foods in life are gels, but the gel can be divided into two kinds, one of the most common, that is, how the gel will not disintegrate and melt into a liquid, the most typical and common such as tofu, cold powder, There is also a kind of heating that will melt into a liquid, called jelly glue, such as fish jelly, meat jelly and so on that we often encounter. The soup bun is the use of the phenomenon of jelly glue heating into liquid, according to the general process of Wenlou crab yellow soup bun production, the chicken, pork and meat skin are fully boiled to form a thick soup, and then add crab yellow crab meat and other ingredients, and then cooled to a low temperature can form a jelly glue. The chunky gel glue is crushed into a filling, wrapped in the dough and steamed, and the original solid gel glue filling becomes a liquid soup after being heated.
Fish jelly in the form of a fish is both delicious and beautiful
The thin skin of the water-adjusted noodles adds to the icing on the cake: According to reports, after the establishment of Wenlou, the owner of the shop, Chen Haixian, transformed the Wulou fermented noodle skewer soup bun, which was also operated by him, into a water-adjusted noodle soup bun. I think this should be one of the most important reforms, a key to why soup buns can become soup buns. Fermented noodles (used in general buns) are an aerogel (see also: The Science of Life – From the Taste of Meat Balls) in Yun Breeze's "Science in Life – From the Taste of Meat Balls"), which contains a large number of tiny holes in the dough, and the soup in the filling is easily absorbed by the dough of the buns. I think many people will feel that they like to eat the part of the bun skin that is close to the meat filling, because it absorbs the delicious soup in the meat filling. However, if the soup bun also uses such a dough skin, I am afraid that it will not be able to become a soup bun, and almost all the soup juices will probably be sucked into the dough of the bun, leaving only the solid residue in the filling, and losing the characteristics and tasting experience of the soup bun. Water noodles (we generally call it "dead noodles") are relatively dense, not easy to absorb the soup, can be filled and the skin are independent, maintaining the characteristics of "soup buns". If the dough is made very thin, it can reduce or eliminate the poor taste caused by dead noodles, so another feature of Wenlou soup bun is that the skin is as thin as paper. The same example of thin water dough is burning, and the same is true.
Thin to translucent baking dough (the dough used for firing belongs to the hot noodles in the water-adjusted noodles)
The competition of speed affects the quality of the filling: there is a step in the traditional production process of Wenlou soup buns: after the broth and crab yellow crab meat and other ingredients are mixed, it must be continuously stirred in the basin with chopsticks, so that the solids in the filling do not precipitate and do not stick to the bottom, until the soup filling is cooled and condensed into a solid, so as to ensure that the solid part is evenly distributed in the gelatin formed, so as to ensure that the ingredients in the filling of each soup bag are uniform and stable. Obviously, this is also a technical key to ensuring the quality of the soup buns. However, with the continuous development of modern technology, it is possible to use advanced equipment instead of labor, because the key to maintaining uniform filling quality is that the solidification rate of the filling is faster than the sedimentation rate of the solid part of the filling, so as long as the freezing speed can be increased, thereby improving this time-consuming and laborious step in the traditional production process, and can get better quality assurance.
(Some of the pictures in the article are from the Internet)