A spring roll is a thin wrapper around a filling, rolled and usually fried. An egg roll, in the United States, is a thicker, blistered, deep-fried roll filled with cabbage and pork, and it is an American restaurant dish rather than a Chinese one. The Chinese thing behind both is 春卷 chunjuan, “spring roll” — and what the records show is that it began not as a roll at all, but as a plate of raw vegetables.
The Short Answer
| What it is | Where it belongs | |
|---|---|---|
| Spring roll 春卷 | Thin wheat wrapper, rolled around a filling, fried; smaller, blisters less, shatters when you bite it | Chinese, and the subject of this page |
| Egg roll | Thick, bubbled wrapper, deep-fried, usually cabbage and pork | American Chinese restaurants, from the twentieth century |
| Fresh rice-paper roll | Soft rice-paper wrapper, not fried, served cold | Vietnamese restaurants. The English phrase “spring roll” covers it too, which is a large part of the confusion — but we have no primary material on it, so this page does not cover it |
If you order a “spring roll” in an American Chinese restaurant you will usually get the thin fried kind; if you order an egg roll you will get the thick one. In Chinese there is no dish called an egg roll.
Where the Chinese Side Actually Starts
Where spring rolls come from is usually answered with a dynasty. Here is what can be checked, in order.
The oldest record we can read is a sixth-century book on the seasonal customs of the Jingchu region, and the food in it is not a roll and not a pancake. It is a plate of raw, pungent vegetables, and it belongs to New Year’s Day:
於是長幼悉正衣冠。以次拜賀。進椒柏酒。飲桃湯。進屠蘇酒。膠牙餳。下五辛盤。進敷于散。服卻鬼丸。各進一雞子。
“Then old and young alike straighten their clothes and caps and offer New Year greetings in order. Pepper-and-cypress wine is brought, peach broth drunk, tusu wine served, malt sugar offered, the five-pungent platter set down, fuyusan powder taken, the ghost-repelling pill swallowed, and an egg given to each.”
The old commentary to that passage says what was on the platter, quoting an earlier book of local customs:
周處風土記曰。元日造五辛盤。正月元日。五薰鍊形。注。五辛所以發五藏之氣。即大蒜。小蒜。韭菜。雲臺。胡荽是也。
“Zhou Chu’s Record of Local Customs says: on New Year’s Day the five-pungent platter is made. On the first day of the first month, the five aromatics temper the body. The note says: the five pungents open the qi of the five organs — they are garlic, scallion-garlic, Chinese chives, rape, and coriander.”
Garlic, small garlic, chives, rape and coriander: five sharp raw greens on a plate, eaten at the turn of the year to clear you out. That is the ancestor. There is no wrapper in it yet.
Two things are worth being careful about here. The passage above is the main text; the list of five is in the book’s old commentary, quoting another work — so it is one step removed, and we say so. And the platter belongs to New Year’s Day, 元日, not to the start of spring.
That second point matters more than it looks, because the same book has an entry for the first day of spring, and there is no food in it at all:
立春之日。悉翦綵為鷰以戴之。帖宜春二字。
“On the day spring begins, everyone cuts coloured silk into swallows and wears them, and pastes up the two characters yi chun, ‘fitting for spring.'”
Paper swallows and two characters on the door. No platter, no pancake, nothing to eat. The line that ties the five-pungent platter to the start of spring does exist — but in the edition we are reading it appears among the collected fragments at the back, gathered from a Ming-dynasty compilation that attributes it to this book:
立春日。作五辛盤。以黃柑釀酒。謂之洞庭春色
“On the day spring begins, make the five-pungent platter, and brew wine with yellow citrus; this is called Dongting Spring Colour.”
So the join between the platter and the beginning of spring is real, but the earliest place we can point to for it is a book from roughly a thousand years after the original. Anyone who tells you the spring roll was invented in a particular dynasty is working with less than this.
The Spring Platter, and the Spring Pancake
By the Southern Song the platter has a name of its own, 春盤 chunpan, “spring platter,” and it has become expensive. The Hangzhou memoir of the period describes what the palace kitchens sent out on the first day of spring:
后苑办造春盘供进，及分赐贵邸宰臣巨珰，翠缕红丝，金鸡玉燕，备极精巧，每盘直万钱。
“The rear-garden kitchens made spring platters to present, and to distribute to the noble houses, the chief ministers and the great eunuchs — kingfisher threads and red silks, golden cockerels and jade swallows, worked to the last degree of fineness. Each platter was worth ten thousand cash.”
The paper swallows from the sixth-century book are still there, six hundred years later, except now they are made of jade and sit on a plate of food that costs ten thousand cash.
The same city’s market record shows the other end of it. Spring pancakes, 春餅 chunbing, are not a court thing there; they are sold in the street, in a list of what is on offer at midday:
日午卖糖粥、烧饼、炙焦馒头、炊饼、辣菜饼、春饼、点心之属。
“At midday they sell sugar porridge, shaobing, toasted mantou, steamed cakes, spicy vegetable cakes, spring pancakes, and other snacks.”
That is the first point where the thing has a wrapper and is being sold to anyone who walks past.
When It Became Something You Roll
The name drifts. In a Yuan-dynasty court food manual, 春盤 has become the name of a noodle dish — spring-platter noodles, a bowl of fine-cut noodles with mutton, tripe, egg crêpe and mushrooms. We mention it only to show that the words moved around; the noodles belong on another page.
The clearest description of the thing itself comes from a Beijing almanac of 1758:
新春日献辛盘。虽士庶之家，亦必割鸡豚，炊面饼，而杂以生菜、青韭芽、羊角葱，冲和合菜皮，兼生食水红萝卜，名曰咬春。
“At the new spring the pungent platter is offered. Even in ordinary households they will cut up chicken and pork, steam flour pancakes, and mix in lettuce, green chive shoots and horn scallions, blending them with hecai skins, and also eat raw red radish — this is called ‘biting spring.'”
咬春, yao chun, “biting spring.” That is the whole thing in two characters: a flour pancake, raw sharp greens, some meat, and a bite. It is a wrap you assemble at the table, not a roll that arrives fried. A nineteenth-century Beijing almanac says the same in one line:
是日富家多食春饼，妇女等多买罗卜而食之，曰咬春，谓可以却春困也。
“On that day the well-off eat spring pancakes, and the women buy radishes to eat; this is called biting spring, and it is said to drive off spring drowsiness.”
The five raw pungent vegetables of the sixth century are still in there — the chives, the scallions, the radish eaten raw.
And the word 春卷 itself — spring roll, rather than spring platter or spring pancake? The earliest occurrence we can put our hands on is late. It is in a 1909 survey of Chengdu, in the street-food price list, between the prawn buns and the shaomai:
春卷 十二文。
“Spring rolls: twelve cash.”
Twelve cash, against four for a bun and four for a shaomai — three times the price of a filled steamed bun on the same page. By 1909 it is a street item with a price, and it is one of the dearer things on the list.
The Egg Roll Is an American Dish
There is no egg roll in any of the above, and there is no egg roll in China.
What is generally said is this: the American egg roll was created in a Chinese restaurant in New York in the early twentieth century, and two names come up, Henry Low and Lum Fong. That is the account in general circulation, and it is the one repeated in reference entries and in the trade.
We have not seen the primary material behind it — no menu, no advertisement, no registration, nothing we could put in front of you. So we are passing the claim on as a claim, and saying plainly that we cannot check it. What can be said without any sources at all is the negative: the egg roll is not in the Chinese records above, it is not a dish in China today, and everyone who writes about it, in English and in Chinese, treats it as something that happened in America.
That makes the usual framing backwards. The spring roll is not a fancy version of the egg roll, and the egg roll is not an ancient dish. The spring roll’s ancestry runs back to a plate of raw garlic and chives in a sixth-century book; the egg roll is roughly a century old and was invented in a restaurant.
Why “Egg Roll” When There Is No Egg?
This is one of the most common questions about it, and the honest answer is that we do not know.
The explanations in circulation are that egg was once brushed on the wrapper, that the wrapper was once made with egg, that the dough was sealed with beaten egg, or that the name came from an earlier dish with egg in it. We have not found a source for any of them, and they cannot all be right. If someone tells you one of them as a fact, ask where it is written down.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between an egg roll and a spring roll?
The wrapper. A spring roll uses a thin sheet that fries up smooth and shatters; an egg roll uses a thick dough wrapper that blisters and stays chewy. The egg roll is also larger, is normally filled with cabbage and pork, and is an American restaurant dish.
Where did egg rolls come from?
From a Chinese restaurant in the United States, in the early twentieth century, by the account in general circulation — the names Henry Low and Lum Fong are the ones that come up. We have not been able to check that against primary material, and we say so. What is clear is that it is not in the Chinese records.
Do they eat egg rolls in China?
No. There is no dish in China called an egg roll. Spring rolls, 春卷, are eaten there, and so is the older thing they came from: a thin flour pancake wrapped around raw vegetables, eaten at the start of spring.
What do Americans call spring rolls?
Both “spring roll” and “egg roll,” which is the source of the trouble. In American usage the two usually mark the thin wrapper and the thick one. “Spring roll” in English also covers the fresh rice-paper rolls served in Vietnamese restaurants, which are a different food again.
What is a spring roll made of?
A thin wheat-flour wrapper around a filling — shredded cabbage or bamboo shoot, sometimes pork, sometimes nothing but vegetables — rolled, sealed and fried. The older form has no frying in it at all: a soft flour pancake, raw sharp greens, and your own hands.
Where did spring rolls originate?
In China, but not in a dynasty anyone can name for you. The oldest thing we can check is a New Year’s platter of five raw pungent vegetables in a sixth-century book. The wrapper appears in the Song records, the assembled wrap is described in 1758, and the word 春卷 itself we can only trace to 1909.
Sources
The Chinese passages above are quoted from the editions named, in the characters those editions print. That is why some appear in traditional characters and some in simplified: each follows the edition it was read in, and we do not convert them.
- Zong Lin 宗懍, Jingchu suishi ji 荊楚歲時記 (sixth century), Song Jinlong 宋金龍 annotated edition, based on the Baoyantang miji text — the New Year entry and its old commentary; the Lichun entry; the collected fragment from Chen Jie 陳階, Bianri xinshu 編日新書 (Ming).
- Zhou Mi 周密, Wulin jiushi 武林旧事 (Southern Song) — the spring platters of the rear-garden kitchens.
- Wu Zimu 吴自牧, Meng liang lu 梦梁录 (Southern Song) — spring pancakes among the midday street food.
- Hu Sihui 忽思慧, Yinshan zhengyao 饮膳正要 (1330) — “chunpan mian” 春盘面.
- Pan Rongbi 潘荣陛, Dijing suishi jisheng 帝京岁时纪胜 (1758) — the “chunpan” entry.
- Fucha Dunchong 富察敦崇, Yanjing suishi ji 燕京岁时记 (1906) — the “dachun” 打春 entry.
- Fu Chongju 傅崇矩, Chengdu tonglan 成都通览 (1909) — the street-food price list.
The account of the American egg roll is given above as an account, not as a record: we have not been able to check it against primary material.
For how we check a passage before it appears here, see our page on editorial method. The dated list of the earliest record we can check for each dish is on the earliest records page.