Milk Recipe: Chinese “Fried Milk”

Reader Contribution by Staff

The popular idea that the Chinese have always shunned milk products is quite inaccurate. So is the notion that lactose intolerance accounts for the very widespread modern Chinese dislike of milk, butter, and any dairy product that doesn’t come out of a can.

The French historian Francoise Sabban exposed these mistakes more than 20 years ago. As she shows, descriptions of milking practices, dairy products, and the use of milk in cooking are routinely found in many sources, including agricultural and culinary treatises from the sixth to the 18th century. 

Why the dominant Han Chinese ethnic population eventually developed an aversion to the mere idea of tasting milk or butter, and why the use of these foods became almost entirely limited to a few ethnic minorities in the Mongol or Uighur outposts of the empire, are among the great puzzles of history. Certainly the use of cows’ milk today is a piece of Westernization that has penetrated very unevenly into Chinese society. But in recent times an intriguing dish called “fried milk” has achieved currency in some of the areas most deeply affected by European contact, chiefly in Kwangtung (Canton) province and Hong Kong. It should not be confused with another local dish of the same name, a dessert made out of a superthick, starchy milk-based custard cut into squares or diamonds and then deep-fried in a batter coating in the same way as its probable inspiration, the Portuguese leite frito.

The second or savory kind of “fried milk” slightly resembles fu yung, at least the very delicate versions that use only egg whites. It, too, could be described as a custard, but a lightly set savory one made with a combination of milk, egg whites, and a little cornstarch, all stir-fried to the texture of scrambled eggs. When I’ve had it in Chinatown restaurants, it usually contains crab or shrimp and sometimes is served on a bed of fried cellophane noodles or rice sticks. Browned pine nuts are the usual garnish.

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