The Chaoshan summer's classic cooling sweet: a soft, near-black herbal jelly set from the boiled-down mesona herb, scooped into a bowl and eaten cold under a heap of white sugar. Despite the character 粿, it is not a rice cake at all but a grass jelly, the local cousin of the herbal jelly sold across southern China. Plain it is grassy, faintly bitter and 'cooling'; the sprinkle of sugar that melts into it is what makes each soft, slithery spoonful sweet. Sold from shoulder-pole stalls and carts in the heat, it is prized as a heat-clearing treat rather than a rich dessert.
Grass jelly is a southern Chinese summer food, and the Teochew bowl is the Chaoshan version of it, called 草粿 — literally 'grass kueh', though it is a jelly rather than a rice cake, the character 粿 here used loosely for the set, eaten-from-a-bowl treat. It is made from mesona (草粿草 / 仙草, Chinese mesona), a mint-family herb that releases a setting polysaccharide when boiled, the same plant behind grass jellies across Fujian, Guangdong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. In hot weather it was a fixture of Chaoshan street life, carried in a wooden tub on a shoulder pole and scooped to order, valued in the local 'hot and cooling' food-sense as something to clear summer heat. As a folk cooling food its precise origin is not documented to a date; what is fixed is the herb it is set from and its place in the Teochew summer.
Set soft, it wobbles in the bowl and breaks into smooth, slithery pieces under the spoon, dark brown-black and barely translucent. On its own the taste is gently grassy and lightly bitter-herbal, with the cooling, medicinal note of the mesona — clean rather than rich, and not sweet at all. That is why it is buried under white sugar: the sugar crystals melt into a thin syrup that threads through, so the first taste is herbal and the finish is sweet and cool. Eaten cold, often with ice, it is soft, refreshing and weightless, a heat-relief snack you drink almost as much as eat — softer and more slippery than a starch jelly, with the herb's faint perfume.
The set is a botanical gel from the herb, not a gelatin or a starch one. Dried mesona is simmered long and hard in water with a little alkali; this draws out its water-soluble polysaccharides, the gelling agents the plant carries, and the alkali raises the yield and firmness of the set. The dark decoction is strained, and because the mesona polysaccharide gels only weakly on its own, a small amount of starch (sweet-potato or rice) is usually stirred in and cooked to give the jelly enough body to hold a soft, sliceable shape; the hot liquid is then poured out and left to cool, setting on its own as it drops to room temperature and then chills. No gelatin is involved, which is why it stays vegetarian and clean-tasting, and the colour and faint bitterness are simply the herb itself. The sugar is added only at serving, undissolved, so it can melt slowly into the cold jelly.
Variations
The Teochew way is deliberately plain — soft black jelly under a scatter of white granulated sugar, eaten cold, sometimes with shaved ice — and that simplicity is the point, setting it apart from the dressed-up bowls elsewhere. It should not be confused with three relatives: turtle jelly (龟苓膏) is a darker, more bitter set made from turtle plastron and smilax with many medicinal herbs, not from mesona alone; the starch-based cold jelly (凉粉) of Sichuan and the north is a savory mung-bean or pea-starch noodle-gel, a different food entirely; and Taiwan's hot grass jelly (烧仙草) is the same mesona plant served hot and thickened with toppings, where the Teochew bowl is cold and bare. Modern shops may sweeten it with honey or syrup, or add it to iced drinks, but the white-sugar bowl is the traditional one.
On the Palate
Where Teochew Grass Jelly sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
7 steps · 30 min active + 1 hour waiting
- 110 min
Rinse the dried mesona to wash off grit, then soak it briefly in water.
- 260 min
Simmer the mesona in plenty of water with a small pinch of edible alkali over low heat for about an hour, until the liquid is very dark and herbal; top up the water as needed.
Watch outSimmer the mesona a good hour with a pinch of alkali until the liquid is very dark and herbal — the alkali and the long cook are what pull out enough gelling polysaccharide to set.
- 310 min
Strain the decoction through a cloth, pressing the herb to extract all the dark liquid, and discard the spent herb.
- 48 min
Stir a little sweet-potato or rice starch into cold water, whisk it into the hot decoction, and cook gently, stirring, until slightly thickened and smooth.
Watch outWhisk the starch slurry in and cook just until slightly thickened and smooth — mesona alone barely gels, so this starch gives it the body to hold a soft slice.
- 55 min
Pour the hot liquid into bowls or a tray and leave undisturbed to cool to room temperature.
- 660 min
Chill in the refrigerator until fully set and wobbling.
- 73 min
Scoop or cut the cold jelly into a bowl, scatter generously with white granulated sugar, and serve cold, with ice if liked.
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