Dragon's beard candy
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| Alternative names | Chinese cotton candy |
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| Region or state | China |
| Main ingredients | Fine white sugar, peanuts, desiccated coconut, white sesame seeds, corn syrup, glutinous rice flour |
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| Dragon's beard candy | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 龍鬚糖 | ||||||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | 龙须糖 | ||||||||||
| Literal meaning | dragon beard candy | ||||||||||
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| Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 銀絲糖 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 银丝糖 | ||||||||||
| Literal meaning | silver silk candy | ||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | lóng xū táng |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | lung4 sou1 tong4*2 |
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | yíng sī táng |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | ngan4 si1 tong4*2 |
Dragon's beard candy (or Chinese cotton candy) is a handmade traditional art of China. It is also a traditional Chinese sweet similar to spun sugar, which can be found in many Chinese communities. Dragon's Beard Candy was initially created in China, but soon spread in popularity and became a regional delicacy in other parts of East Asia, as well as (and more recently) Canada, Singapore, the United States, Taiwan, Macau, and Japan. Dragon's Beard Candy was a highly prized sweet within the Korean royal court as well.
Dragon's beard candy has been described as an old-fashioned candy characterized by a "rich, sweet flavor" with a threaded, chewy texture. Its appearance resembles that of a white cocoon or pillow shape. It has a high sugar content (19%), and 2% saturated fat content. By comparison, cotton candy is fat free with a very high sugar content (94%). Dragon's beard candy has a very short shelf life. It is highly sensitive to moisture, and tends to melt when exposed to higher temperatures, notably during warm weather.
The following table presents the nutritional information of dragon's beard candy per serving (37g).
The legend of Dragon's Beard Candy was first notably practiced during the Chinese Han Dynasty. As the story recounts, an imperial court chef entertained the Emperor one day by performing steps involved in making a new confection. The process of making the candy involved stretching a dough-like mixture composed from rice flour into small, thin strands. These strands reminded the Emperor of a dragon's beard, and were sticky enough to adhere to one's face quite easily, so thus the concoction was there-forth named as Dragon's Beard Candy. The name may also be attributed to the status of the mythical dragon as a symbol of the Chinese Emperor, so presenting the confection as Dragon's Beard Candy was deemed acceptable due to the social nature of the candy, as it was reserved only for the ruling class, likely due additionally to the complexity of the preparation process. Dragon's Beard Candy provided a source of conflict several centuries later, however, as during the Chinese Cultural Revolution the Red Guard, acting in accordance to the orders of the Communist Party of China, forbade the Chinese populace to hold activities that could be attributed to the Han Dynasty. Because the initially rare nature of the candy was at this point combined with government enforcement of disdaining this art, the craft of making Dragon's Beard Candy became even more isolated and sparsely practiced. Nevertheless, in recent years, the art has resurfaced in tourist destinations such as various street festivals, and has even spread to farther reaches of the globe through dedicated masters of the task. One of the more famous instances of this occurrence involved the spread of Dragon's Beard Candy to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, through a Hong Kong-born Canadian named Johnny Chin who began practicing the theatrical candy-making art in Montreal in 1991.
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Wikipedia