Congee is rice cooked in far more water than rice normally needs, for far longer than rice normally takes, until the grains break down and the whole thing turns thick and loose at once. In Mandarin it is 粥 zhōu; in much of the southwest and Sichuan it is 稀饭 xīfàn, “thin rice”; in Cantonese it is 粥 juk. The English word congee comes from Tamil by way of Portuguese, which is why it does not sound like any of them.
It is breakfast food, invalid food, temple food and late-night food, and it has been sold in the street for at least seven hundred years. What it is not is a single dish. It is a staple.
Congee, Porridge, and 稀饭
The commonest question in English is whether congee is just porridge. The answer depends on which porridge you mean.
| What it is | What it tastes of | |
|---|---|---|
| Congee 粥 | Rice simmered in a large amount of water until the grains collapse | Of rice, cleanly, and of nothing else; it carries whatever goes on top |
| Oat porridge | Rolled or cut oats cooked in water or milk, thick and sticky | Oats, and usually sugar, salt or milk |
| 稀饭 xifan | The same thing as congee, under the word used in the southwest; sometimes looser, with more grain still intact | Same |
| 米汤 mitang | The thin water poured off boiled rice | Faintly of rice |
So congee is a porridge in the broad English sense of the word — a grain boiled soft in liquid — and it is not porridge in the narrow British and American sense, where the word means oats. If someone hands you a bowl of congee expecting oatmeal they will be disappointed in both directions: it is not sweet, and on its own it tastes of rice and nothing else.
That last point is the one that matters. Plain congee does have a taste — the clean smell of rice and nothing competing with it — and the dish is built so that whatever you add sits on that. In the south it arrives with century egg and shredded pork, or fish, or preserved vegetable; in the north it is drunk alongside the fried and baked things rather than dressed. The question “what does congee taste like” has the same answer as “what does rice taste like,” and that is the design.
Where It Was Sold
The clearest picture of congee as street food comes from a Southern Song memoir of Hangzhou. The shops on the imperial avenue opened on the sound of the bell:
御街铺店，闻钟而起，卖早市点心，如煎白肠、羊鹅事件、糕、粥、血脏羹、羊血、粉羹之类。冬天卖五味肉粥、七宝素粥，夏月卖义粥、馓子、豆子粥。
“The shops on the imperial street rise at the bell and sell early-market snacks: fried white sausage, mutton and goose parts, cakes, congee, blood-and-offal soup, sheep’s blood, noodle soups and the like. In winter they sell five-flavour meat congee and seven-treasure vegetarian congee; in summer, charity congee, sanzi, and bean congee.”
Four things are worth taking out of that sentence. Congee is sold in a shop, not made at home. It opens at first light, with the same timing as the youtiao and douhua stalls seven hundred years later. The menu changes with the season. And two of the names — five-flavour and seven-treasure — are going to come back.
The same book has congee again at midday, in a different list:
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 congee, shaobing, toasted mantou, steamed cakes, spicy vegetable cakes, spring pancakes, and other snacks.”
Sugar congee at noon, meat congee in winter, bean congee in summer. This is not a dish with a correct form. It is a category with a price.
The Beijing Congee Shop
For the twentieth century there are people who remember. Tang Lusun 唐鲁孙, setting down what the Beijing of his childhood ate, puts congee exactly where the Song shops put it — next to the fried things:
北平人吃烧饼果子，要喝点儿稀的，主要是喝粳米粥。卖这种粥的有粥铺，也有挑着粥锅下街的。这种粥，仿佛跟广东的煲粥近似，虽然粥里的米粒，粒粒分明，可是都接近溶化程度。
“Beiping people eating shaobing and guozi want something wet with it, and mostly that means japonica-rice congee. The people selling it had congee shops, and there were also men who carried the congee pot down the street. This congee is close to Cantonese slow-cooked congee: the grains in it stay separate, but they are near the point of dissolving.”
He adds that the shops sold a second, dearer kind, and that it went away:
粥铺从前还卖一种叫甜酱粥，价钱比粳米粥贵，北平人生活俭朴，到了民国二十几年，甜酱粥就成了历史名词，想喝也没处喝了。
“The congee shops used to sell another kind called tianjiang congee, dearer than the japonica congee. Beiping people lived frugally, and by the twenty-somethingth year of the Republic tianjiang congee had become a historical term — you could want it and have nowhere to drink it.”
Liang Shiqiu 梁实秋 remembers the same shops and the same vanishing:
从前北平有所谓粥铺，清晨卖“甜浆粥”，是用一种碎米熬成的稀米汤，有一种奇特的风味，佐以特制的螺丝转儿炸麻花儿，是很别致的平民化早点，但是不知何故被淘汰了。还有所谓大麦粥，是沿街叫卖的平民食物，有异香，也不见了。
“Beiping used to have what were called congee shops, selling ‘tianjiang congee’ first thing in the morning — a thin rice soup boiled from a kind of broken rice, with a peculiar flavour of its own, taken with the special twisted rolls and fried mahua. It was a very distinctive bit of plain people’s breakfast, and for some reason it was done away with. There was also barley congee, a poor man’s food cried along the street, with a strange fragrance to it; that is gone too.”
Liang Shiqiu opens his essay on congee by admitting he does not like it:
我不爱吃粥。小时候一生病就被迫喝粥。因此非常怕生病。
“I don’t like congee. When I was small, the moment I fell ill I was made to drink congee. So I was very afraid of falling ill.”
Congee Is a Summer Food Too
In English, congee is almost always presented as a winter dish, something for cold mornings and for being unwell. The records do not support that, and two of them, six hundred years and a thousand miles apart, say the same thing.
The Hangzhou shops, quoted above, sold bean congee in summer. And a survey of Chengdu made in 1909 has a whole heading of its own:
夏天食品 须热天方有售者
冰粉 米凉粉 凉糍粑 凉虾 藕稀饭 糖水 绿豆稀饭 荷叶稀饭 豆浆稀饭
“Summer foods — only on sale in hot weather: bingfen, rice liangfen, cold ciba, liangxia, lotus-root congee, sugar water, mung bean congee, lotus-leaf congee, soy-milk congee.”
Four of the nine summer items in that list are congee. They are sold because it is hot, not in spite of it.
One of them turns up again in Beijing, in Liang Shiqiu’s account of how it was made:
若是粥煮好后取嫩荷叶洗净铺在粥上，粥变成淡淡的绿色，有一股荷叶的清香渗入粥内，是为“荷叶粥”。
“If, once the congee is cooked, you take tender lotus leaves, wash them and lay them over the top, the congee turns a faint green and a clean lotus fragrance soaks into it; this is ‘lotus-leaf congee.'”
Chengdu in 1909 sold it off a stall in the heat. A Beijing household made it at home. Same leaf, same green, two cities.
Laba Congee: the One With a Fixed Day
腊八粥 làbā zhōu is eaten on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, and it is the only congee on this page with a date attached to it.
The oldest record we can put our hands on for it is the same Hangzhou memoir, in its entry for the twelfth month:
此月八日，寺院谓之“腊八”。大刹等寺，俱设五味粥，名曰“腊八粥”
“On the eighth of this month, which the monasteries call Laba, the great temples all set out a five-flavour congee, called ‘laba congee.'”
Temples, Southern Song, and the name already fixed. Notice what the congee is called: 五味粥, five-flavour congee — the same words that, a few pages earlier in the same book, are the name of an ordinary winter congee sold in a shop on the imperial avenue. Tang Lusun, writing six centuries later, gives the festival bowl its fuller name, 七宝五味粥, seven-treasure five-flavour congee, and seven-treasure is the other word from that same shop menu. We are not going to tell you which way the borrowing ran. We are telling you that in one city, in one book, the temple name and the market name are the same two words.
Seventeen days after the temple congee, the same book has another one. Households boiled a red bean congee to offer to the god of food, and counted the household in portions:
二十五日，士庶家煮赤豆粥祀食神，名曰“人口粥”，有猫狗者，亦与焉。不知出于何典。
“On the twenty-fifth, gentry and common households boil a red bean congee to sacrifice to the god of food; it is called ‘head-count congee,’ and those with cats and dogs include them too. I do not know which text it comes from.”
不知出于何典 — “I do not know which text it comes from.” He is writing about his own neighbours, in his own lifetime, about a thing they do every year, and he still stops to say he cannot source it. That is seven hundred years ago, and it is the method of this site in six characters.
How Far Back the Name Goes
Congee is older than any of the above; rice boiled in water needs no inventing. What can be dated is the written record, and the oldest one we can read ourselves is a sixth-century book on the seasonal customs of the Jingchu region. Congee is in it three times, and all three are festivals.
The fifteenth of the first month:
正月十五日。作豆糜。加油膏其上。以祠門戶
“On the fifteenth of the first month, make a bean congee, put fat on top of it, and offer it to the door-gods.”
The Cold Food days in spring, when fires were put out:
去冬節一百五日。即有疾風甚雨。謂之寒食。禁火三日。造餳大麥粥
“A hundred and five days after the winter solstice there is high wind and heavy rain; this is called Cold Food. Fires are forbidden for three days, and malt-sugar barley congee is made.”
And the winter solstice:
冬至日。量日影。作赤豆粥。以禳疫
“On the winter solstice day, measure the shadow of the sun, and make a red bean congee to drive off plague.”
A bean congee for the doorway, a barley congee for the days without fire, a red bean congee for the solstice. Three festivals, one book, sixth century. That is where the record starts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is congee just overcooked rice?
In method, more or less — that is what it is, rice cooked past the point where rice is done, in a great deal more water. In practice no, because the water and the time are the whole point: many times more water than rice, held at a bare simmer long enough for the grains to give up their shape. Rice that is merely overcooked is a failure. Congee is overcooked on purpose, all the way.
What is congee called in English?
Congee, mostly, and the word is not Chinese — it comes into English from Tamil through Portuguese. You will also see Chinese rice porridge, rice soup, and in Cantonese contexts jook or juk. The Chinese words are 粥 zhōu and, in the southwest, 稀饭 xīfàn.
What’s the difference between porridge and congee?
If “porridge” means oats, the difference is the grain, the texture and the point: congee is rice, it is savory far more often than sweet, and it tastes of rice so that whatever goes on top can be tasted against it. If “porridge” means any grain boiled soft in liquid, then congee is one.
What is congee made of?
Rice and water. Everything else is on top. The plain bowl is the dish; the century egg, the shredded pork, the preserved vegetable, the fried dough, the ginger and scallion are all additions, and which ones you get is a matter of where you are.
Is congee Chinese?
The dish is eaten right across East and Southeast Asia under many names, and the English word for it is Tamil. What is Chinese is this particular line of record — congee sold from shops at the opening bell, priced on a street-food list, and set out at temples on a fixed day — which is what this page is about.
How do you pronounce congee?
In English, CON-jee. The Chinese words sound nothing like it: 粥 is zhōu, close to “joe” with a hard start; 稀饭 is shee-fan.
Is congee sweet or savory?
Both, and it has been both for as long as we can check. One Hangzhou list has sugar congee at midday and meat congee in winter. A 1909 Chengdu list has mung bean and lotus-root congee sold as summer refreshment. The north drinks it plain beside salty fried things; the south dresses it.
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 entries for the fifteenth of the first month, for Cold Food, and for the winter solstice; and the La-day entry, which has no congee in it.
- Wu Zimu 吴自牧, Meng liang lu 梦梁录 (Southern Song) — the dawn and midday shop lists, the twelfth-month temple congee, and the “head-count congee.”
- Fu Chongju 傅崇矩, Chengdu tonglan 成都通览 (1909) — the “summer foods” heading, vol. 2, p. 266. Checked against the original edition.
The following are recollections, written down decades after the events they describe:
- Tang Lusun 唐鲁孙 — on japonica-rice congee, the congee shops and the carrying pole, and on the laba congee’s names.
- Liang Shiqiu 梁实秋, Yashe tan chi 雅舍谈吃, “Zhou” 粥 — on the congee shops, barley congee, lotus-leaf congee, and on not liking congee.
Three notes. We have not checked the Northern Song capital memoir for the laba congee passage it is usually cited for, and we do not quote it here. (That book does appear on our earliest-records page, for other dishes.) The congee entries in the Yuan and Ming dietary manuals — of which there are a great many — are medical writing, prescriptions rather than street food; we have left them out of this page rather than paraphrase them. And the English word’s descent from Tamil is the standard dictionary account, not something we have checked against a primary source; it is the one claim on this page that does not rest on an edition we have read.
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.