Nanjing Duck Blood Vermicelli Soup

Nanjing has eaten duck since the Six Dynasties era (3rd-6th century), and Ming-dynasty Nanjing was already nicknamed the Duck Capital. The older Nanjing tradition was a plain duck-blood soup (no vermicelli) that used up the blood and giblets from the city's salt-water duck shops; documented in Republican-era Nanjing, it spread through southern-city stalls around mid-century. The vermicelli-and-tofu version that defines the dish today is much more recent, only spreading widely in Nanjing around the mid-1990s. Today there are reportedly more than 5,000 specialty shops in Nanjing alone.

Nanjing has eaten duck since the Six Dynasties; Ming-era Nanjing was already the Duck Capital. Vermicelli soup emerged in late-1800s street stalls from salt-water duck shop by-products. The city now runs 5,000+ specialty shops.

Clear amber broth, smelling of duck fat and a back-note of citrus from the chenpi. The vermicelli is slippery and grabs onto the broth; duck-blood cubes are silken, almost like firm tofu but with iron at the edges; the giblets each give a different chew — gizzard taut, liver soft, intestine springy. A squirt of ginger juice goes in last for sharpness. If the broth is murky, the cook didn't skim.

Duck blood is mostly water, hemoglobin, and protein; brief alkaline-salt blanching cross-links the proteins enough to firm the texture but stops short of the rubbery state you get from overcooking. The clear broth philosophy is structural: any milky emulsification (from hard-boiling) would mask the iron note of the blood and the chenpi citrus aroma, both of which are the dish's identity.