Emperor Qianlong’s Favorite Cabbage Dish—or Maybe Not

Aficionados know well that Chinese cuisine is built, dish by dish, on poetic but apocryphal origin stories. You know about the meat dish so good it tempted Buddha. You know about the beggar who came into a chicken and cooked it by encasing it in clay. You know about the dutiful wife who brought her husband hot noodles across a rickety bridge every day. 

Do you know about (Qiánlóng báicài, 乾隆白菜), Emperor Qianlong’s favorite cabbage salad? It’s a simple thing: messily torn Napa cabbage leaves tossed in a punchy but balanced dressing of sesame paste, soy sauce, black vinegar, sugar and honey. It’s a dish one can make with the dregs of one’s crisper and pantry—a showcase of Dongbei ingenuity, really. 

When I set out to research this recipe—one of Beijing’s signature dishes—I thought it represented a straightforward case of Chinese culinary marketing spin: The Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) supposedly came across a humble cabbage dish served by an overlooked but secretly talented (and thus deserving) individual. He loved the dish, the guy got rich, the dish entered the canon, etc., etc. I never assumed the story was anything more than myth because, after all, there are many such dishes named for Qianlong, who was a famous foodie. 

I did find tellings that followed this outline in my research. In some versions, the emperor is on one of his sojourns south; in others, he’s simply out late in Beijing. In the most well-known version, the Emperor honors the restaurant that serves him the cabbage with a shiny new name, Duyichu (“Capitol’s Only”), a name that endures to this day. 

The crux of the story is the same in all of these tellings. The emperor is eating raw cabbage, and the emperor does not usually eat raw cabbage—he eats 300-course feasts of bear paw and monkey brains—so there has to be some storytelling hook to bring the cabbage to the emperor: He is out late so the kitchens have closed and there is nothing else to serve; he is somewhere rural and poor and cold so there is nothing but cabbage. You get the point. Also, he is in disguise, so whoever is serving him cabbage can be forgiven for the offense. (It’s worth mentioning that the most popular origin story behind Caesar salad shares the “kitchen had nothing else” trope. Culinary scrappiness seems to be a cross-cultural value.)

But here’s the interesting thing about this origin story: There is no evidence that Qianlong cabbage existed at all before the 2000s. In fact, the first time I came across it was in 2023, at  the Muji Cafe in Beijing. And the first attributable telling of this story I can find doesn’t seem to be much older: In March 2020, Laofangu, a Youtube channel run by three retired Beijing chefs with 855k subscribers, posted a recipe video for Qianlong cabbage. In it, chef Er Bai (a nom de cuisine) claims that the restaurant he worked for, Bianyifang Roast Duck, actually invented Qianlong cabbage. (You’ll notice from the Wikipedia article that Bianyifang came by its name in almost exactly the same way as Duyichu did; this is not a conspiracy, we Chinese just love to play the hits!) 

Now, Bianyifang was established in 1416, so it was operational during Qianlong’s reign. Theoretically, the legend could be true. However, Beijing-based writer Yang Lang went on a deep dive and confirmed that the name 乾隆白菜 was invented within the last 20 years. He points out that we know the Qing emperors ate cooked cabbage in a variety of dishes because the Qing kept meticulous palace records. But across all these records, there is no mention of a dish that resembles Qianlong cabbage. Also, it would have been criminal during imperial times to use the emperor’s name as a dish name. 

Most likely, the real story of the dish’s origins is something more pedestrian but equally telling of Chinese culinary history: Some enterprising executive chef at Bianyifang or Duyichu (now under the same ownership), came up with a dish very loosely inspired by the restaurants’ real imperial legacies and sold the hell out of it. 

In Chinese cuisine, where a city is a bigger brand than any single restaurant, a story like this is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Nowadays, Qianlong cabbage is on every menu in Beijing. It has become so representative of Beijing cuisine, in fact, that in November of 2021, two radio hosts launched into a debate over whether Beijing is a culinary wasteland (LOL) and used Qianlong cabbage as the case study. How do I know this? This episode ended up going viral because the debate got too heated and they were both suspended (LOL!!), which generated a big wave of Qianlong cabbage discourse.

Here’s what I take away from this historical rabbit hole: A real Chinese cuisine legend was born in my lifetime, and I’m delighted to know this. 

Nailing the Dressing for Qianlong Cabbage

Qianlong cabbage is all about the dressing. There’s a lot going on: It’s nutty, umami, sweet and sour, and when it’s well balanced, this salad is hard to stop eating. 

This is a dish where you want to use fresh, high-quality sesame paste, which is the star. If you do not have access to Chinese sesame paste, use peanut butter as the substitute rather than tahini, which doesn’t have the deep roasted flavor we need. From there, it pays to be a little obsessive about getting the ratios right, since we’re all using different soy sauces, sugars, honeys and vinegars. As always, taste and repeat. 

In my obsession, I made nine versions of this dressing before I was happy with it.

My final version is based on what Er Bai does in the Laofangu video. He does not give measurements, but he does give a major clue: The dressing should be 酱香带酸甜 (jiàng xiāng dài suān tián), meaning the primary  character of the sauce should come from the aroma of sesame and soy, with sweet-sour being secondary notes. Most recipes, in my opinion, lead too heavily with the sweet-sour, making the salad too cloying.

I also borrowed a trick from Juqi, one of the best modern restaurants in Beijing. Juqi’s version of Qianlong cabbage has an unmistakable wasabi kick. Like mustard in a Western-style vinaigrette, it cuts the richness of the sauce beautifully.

For more simple-but-delicious side dishes, check out Taylor’s Itty Bitty Baby Bok Choy in Vinegar-Oyster Sauce and Kathy’s Wood Ear Salad ft. Pickled Chili (Liangban Mu’er, 凉拌木耳) or Sichuan Hot and Sour Shredded Potato (Suanla Tudousi, 酸辣土豆丝).