A thick, glossy Cantonese banquet soup of hand-shredded snake simmered with chicken, cured ham, and abalone, scented with chrysanthemum petals and shredded lemon leaf and topped with crisp fried crackers.
The dish is credited to Jiang Kongyin (江孔殷, 1864–1952), a Cantonese scholar from Nanhai (present-day Guangzhou) who passed the final imperial examination of the late Qing in 1904, earning second-class jinshi rank and a place as a compiler (庶吉士) in the Hanlin Academy — hence his honorific 太史 (Taishi), and the dish's name 太史蛇羹 / 太史五蛇羹. A celebrated gourmet later called 'the first gourmand of Guangdong,' he entertained constantly at his Guangzhou mansion, the Taishi Mansion (太史第) in Henan (河南), where his kitchen perfected a snake soup built on several snake species (the canonical 五蛇, 'five snakes') simmered with chicken, ham, and abalone into a thick 羹. His granddaughter Jiang Xianzhu (江献珠, 1926–2014), a noted Hong Kong food writer, recorded the household's dishes and her childhood memories of the family table, helping preserve the recipe. Snake soup is a Lingnan autumn-winter delicacy, eaten when snakes are fattest and prized for warming the body and dispelling damp.
The body is a thick, glossy soup that coats the spoon, the color of pale amber. Threaded through it are fine shreds of snake, chicken, ham, abalone, black fungus, and mushroom, all torn to roughly the same hair-fine thickness so no single texture stands out — the broth is rich and savory with a sweet finish from the long-simmered bones and ham. At the table the soup is crowned with loose chrysanthemum petals and a scatter of finely cut lemon leaf, which lift a clean floral-citrus note over the deep stock; crisp fried crackers (薄脆) are crumbled on top and snap against the silky body.
Everything turns on hand-shredding and a long stock. The snakes, chicken, ham, and abalone are first cooked, then torn by hand — never knife-cut — into the finest possible threads; the rule is the finer the snake shreds, the better, so the羹 carries no chewy bits and every spoonful is uniform. The base is a stock simmered for hours from snake bones, old hen, and cured ham, then strained clean through cloth before the shreds go back in. The soup is bound with a wet-starch slurry (生粉/湿淀粉) stirred in toward the end and pushed (推) until it turns thick and glossy — not a thin broth but a true 羹 that holds the shreds in suspension. The garnishes are functional: chrysanthemum petals and shredded lemon leaf cut the gamy edge of snake and add fragrance, while the crisp crackers add contrast against the smooth body.
Variations
The 'five snakes' were never a single fixed set: sources name different combinations, typically pairing venomous species (cobra 眼镜蛇, banded krait 金脚带, and the like) with non-venomous ones such as the water snake (水律蛇) and rat snake. Versions with fewer species, or a single snake, also exist, and the count is more a banquet ideal than a rule. The dish lived on in Guangzhou and Hong Kong restaurants — long-running snake specialists still make a 太史-style soup in autumn and winter. Crucially, the trade has changed: under China's post-2020 wildlife rules, snakes are not in the national livestock catalogue and selling snake as food is banned on the mainland, so a traditional wild-caught 五蛇 soup is no longer lawfully served there; Hong Kong shops operate under their own regulations. Where snake is restricted, kitchens lean on the same technique with chicken and other shreds.
On the Palate
Where Taishi Snake Soup sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8
How it's made
7 steps · 1 hour 30 min
- 1240 min
Clean and parboil the snake, then simmer the snake bones with an old hen and a knob of cured ham for several hours to build a rich, sweet stock; strain it clean through cloth.
- 240 min
Cook the chicken, ham, abalone, and snake meat through, then tear every piece by hand into the finest possible threads — the finer the snake shreds, the better.
Watch outTear the meats along the grain into hair-fine threads while still warm — the finer the snake shreds, the silkier the soup; knife-cut chunks read chewy and coarse in the bowl.
- 315 min
Soak and finely shred the black fungus and dried mushrooms.
- 410 min
Bring the strained stock back to a simmer, add all the shredded ingredients, and season.
- 58 min
Stir a wet cornstarch slurry into the simmering soup and push it gently until the body turns thick and glossy — a true 羹 that suspends the shreds.
Watch outStream the starch slurry in and keep pushing the ladle in one direction until the soup turns thick and glassy enough to suspend the shreds — dump it in all at once and it clumps.
- 63 min
Ladle into bowls and crown with loose chrysanthemum petals and finely cut lemon leaf.
- 72 min
Top each bowl with crumbled crisp fried crackers and serve at once.
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