A cake of ardent love between husband and wife

Visitors to Dinh Bang Village in Bac Ninh Province should not miss tasting a specialty of this region: the phu the (husband and wife) cake, a traditional cake made from local materials representing marital fidelity, originating from the time of the Ly dynasty (1009-1225).

Phu the cake, a traditional specialty of Dinh Bang Village in Bac Ninh Province representing the ardent love of husband and wife.

The skin is made by grinding and filtering large-sized grain glutinous rice to retrieve the starch. The starch of this rice will be mixed with scraped green papaya and soaked in the juice of the fruit of cape jasmine, which makes the skin both crispy and glutinous and gives it a light yellow color.

Its stuffing is made of green bean ground with sugar, sugar coated lotus seeds and coconut meat. Once stuffed, the cake is wrapped into a square shape in leaves from phrinium and coconut trees and boiled in hot water.

The whole cake is made by hand and every household in the village has their own secret recipe passed down through generations, creating their own tastes and brands for the cake.

It is said that the kings of the Ly Dynasty encouraged agricultural expansion and in their period Dinh Bang and other villages in the country had bumper crops. During festivals and the Lunar New Year, the villagers of Dinh Bang used these agricultural products to make a cake named su se to make offerings to the ancestors.

Once, King Ly Thanh Tong (1023 – 1072) and his wife Y Lan visited the village for a festival and had a chance to taste this cake. They complimented this cake, renamed it to phu the cake and asked the villagers to make it for wedding ceremonies to celebrate the happiness of the couple. Once the cakes are boiled they are wrapped in green banana leaves and tied in pairs with bamboo strings dyed in pink, as an icon of the loyalty of the love between husband and wife.

The cake now is widely known in the whole country and it is made all year round in the markets of the village. In some regions it is wrapped in a square box of banana leaves to offer as a gift. The cakes travel all the country and overseas.

Visitors to Do Temple in Dinh Bang Village will find the cake sold outside the temple priced at VND15,000 for ten cakes.

(Source: SGT)

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