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Fruit from Northern China

Pear sour water (梨菹/漤) and stored bracken (藏蕨)梨菹

The Qimin Yaoshu (6th century) tells how to make "lan", a sour liquid, by sealing small pears under water in a mud-stoppered bottle from autumn to spring, or for about a month. The pears are then peeled, sliced thin and served in the sour liquid with a little honey. The same chapter quotes an older text on storing bracken fern in layers of salt under thin gruel.

Fully documentedFruit30 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe text gives no amounts for the slow method. Only the quick vinegar version has amounts (see variants).
Small pears[qmys-ws]
Water, to cover the pears in the bottle[qmys-ws]
Honeya littleAdded when serving, to make the liquid sweet-sour[qmys-ws]

Total time across the recorded steps: 30 days

Start
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What changes: Small pears go into a bottle and are covered with water

Step 1 of 5
Put small pears in a bottle of water
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

The Qimin Yaoshu (6th century) tells how to make "lan", a sour liquid, by sealing small pears under water in a mud-stoppered bottle from autumn to spring, or for about a month. The pears are then peeled, sliced thin and served in the sour liquid with a little honey. The same chapter quotes an older text on storing bracken fern in layers of salt under thin gruel. Made in 5 steps over 30 days. The longest step, seal the bottle with mud and wait, takes at least 30 days (Jia Sixie).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 30 daysReported[qmys-ws][qmys-sk]Seal the bottle with mud and wait

What makes this one different

The pears ferment in plain water with no salt; the soured water itself (lan) is the product that the slices are served in.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Quick pear lan (卒作)For five and a half pears, 2 sheng of vinegar (苦酒) and 2 sheng of hot water, warmed and poured over the slices; it keeps no more than 5 days in summer [qmys-ws].
  • Stored bracken (《食經》藏蕨法)Bracken layered with salt, one layer each, and covered with thin gruel. Or soaked overnight in thin lye, blanched, dried and buried in lees, which keeps it until the next bracken season [qmys-ws].

Safety

The text warns that the quick vinegar version keeps no more than five days in summer [qmys-ws]. The slow method seals pears in plain water for a month or more, with no salt or added acid, and no source read tests its safety. For canning, the US National Center for Home Food Preservation says some Asian pears are low-acid and need added acid such as lemon juice to stop the bacteria that cause botulism [nchfp-pear]; it does not address this method. Read it as history, not as a method to copy. The Bencao Gangmu quotes Meng Shen (7th century) that eating bracken for a long time dims the eyes, blocks the nose and makes the hair fall, and that it swells the belly of people with cold qi [bencao-ws]. Modern evidence is stronger. Bracken contains ptaquiloside, a carcinogen, and eating it has been linked to oesophageal and stomach cancer, though IARC notes limits in the human studies and rates bracken possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B) [kim2023]. In one Korean study of 20 dried retail samples, soaked first, 20 minutes of boiling cut ptaquiloside by 80–99 % (median 96 %). The authors judged unboiled bracken unsafe, and also boiled bracken at the highest ptaquiloside level they found [kim2023]. The salt-and-gruel method has no boiling and no source read tests it, so it is a historical record and not a method to follow.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Qimin Yaoshu (齊民要術) by Jia Sixie, Northern Wei, 6th century, chapter 88 (作菹藏生菜法第八十八), in juan 9. The bracken method is quoted from the older Shijing (食經). Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu (1578) describes another way to prepare bracken. The young shoots are boiled in ash-lye water to remove the slime, then dried and eaten as a vegetable [bencao-ws].

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
Temperature, salt and pH
The 6th-century Qimin Yaoshu gives warmth only in words and salt only by volume, and no study we found has measured this recipe.
  1. [qmys-ws] Jia Sixie, 齊民要術 卷第九, 作菹藏生菜法第八十八, 梨菹法 and 《食經》藏蕨法 (Chinese Wikisource transcription)archive
  2. [qmys-sk] Jia Sixie, 齊民要術 (四庫全書本) 卷09, the same passages in the Siku Quanshu edition (Chinese Wikisource)archive
  3. [nchfp-pear] National Center for Home Food Preservation (University of Georgia), A Particular Pear to Bear in Mindweb
  4. [kim2023] Kim M.K. et al. 2023, Risk assessment and risk reduction of ptaquiloside in bracken fern, Toxics 11(2):115, doi:10.3390/toxics11020115paper
  5. [bencao-ws] Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu (1578), 菜之二, entry 蕨 (Meng Shen quoted on long use; Li Shizhen on lye-boiled, dried shoots); Chinese text on Wikisource (本草綱目/菜之二), read 2026-11archive