Steamed Cabbage in Supreme Broth

🎯 Steamed Cabbage in Supreme Broth · Technique Matrix

Steamed Cabbage in Supreme Broth is not a "compound-flavor" dish in the traditional sense — it's a showcase of stock-making craft with "pure freshness" at its core. Two recipe records from different sources are presented here side by side. Chen Songru's own 1988 manuscript The True Craft of China's Sichuan Cuisine Masters

📖 Standardized Recipe
Recorded in The True Craft of China's Sichuan Cuisine Masters manuscript

Category	Ingredient	Amount	Notes
Main	Napa cabbage	500g	Use the tender yellow-white heart
Accompaniment	Supreme stock	1750g	Poured over boiling hot
Seasonings	Salt, MSG	To taste	No specific gram amounts noted in the manuscript

Ratio of main ingredient to stock (baselined to 1750g of supreme stock):

Napa cabbage500 g

Supreme stock1750 g

Bar lengths are proportional to gram amounts, for visual reference only. The stock far outweighs the cabbage itself, direct proof of the method's principle: "the stock carries the flavor, the cabbage is merely its vessel."

See "Follow the Old Master" for the complete method.

📝 Chen Songru's Own 1988 Manuscript
A more elaborate method, from his own recollection

Main: Chicken (the primary driver of the clear stock)
Accompaniments: Duck, dried scallop, pork ribs, Yunnan cured ham (multiple ingredients layering the flavor)
Star dish: Napa cabbage, tender yellow-white heart

See "Follow the Old Master" for the complete method.

⚠️ The two accounts come from different sources with different levels of detail; they are presented faithfully side by side, without forcing them into one. The standardized recipe is the "restaurant version, reproducible for outside use" recorded in that book; the 1988 manuscript is the more elaborate method from Chen Songru's own recollection. Whether the two represent the same dish recorded at different points in time has not been confirmed.

▼ Ingredient Selection Detail from Chen Songru's Manuscript

🐔 Chicken

Main ingredient
The primary driver of the clear stock

🦆 Duck

Accompaniment
Adds body to the stock

🦪 Dried scallop

Accompaniment
Seafood note for freshness

🥩 Pork ribs

Accompaniment
Adds bony richness

🥓 Yunnan cured ham

Accompaniment
Cured aroma

🥬 Cabbage heart

The sole star
Tender green, a perfect shape

⚠️ The above are the ingredients explicitly listed in Chen Songru's manuscript; the specific quantities and simmering time aren't spelled out. Unlike Kung Pao Chicken's "precise to the gram" recipe, the technical core of Steamed Cabbage in Supreme Broth lies in "getting the stock's heat right" and "the clarifying technique" — process details that can't be reduced to a percentage.

📜 Chen Songru's Own Words · The Ideal of Steamed Cabbage in Supreme Broth

"It carries the taste of chicken, yet no chicken is seen; it carries the taste of duck, yet no duck is seen. The broth — mellow, plain, and elegant, clear to the bottom; the vegetable — tender green in color, perfect in form."

— Chen Songru, 1988 manuscript First-hand account

🏆 Historical Praise

Pan Wenhua (at his 1938 birthday banquet):
"Excellent! Now this is what I'd call great skill hidden in apparent simplicity!" Biographical retelling
Zhou Enlai (to colleagues visiting from Shanghai):
"Sichuan Restaurant still makes the best Steamed Cabbage in Supreme Broth — you should go there and learn from them." Biographical retelling