Noodle Soups: A Brief History

As the days get shorter and the weather gets chillier, the need for warm, comforting food is even higher than usual! But don’t worry, there’s no need to despair, we have a diverse selection of noodle soups on Chung Ying Central’s Winter Lunch menu, to fill your belly and warm your bones!

For the history of noodle soups, we’ll need to get into our time machine and travel back all the way to the third century. These noodles were very different to our modern day favourites, they were usually made from little pieces of bread dough and thrown into boiling water to cook.

However, the history of noodles may be even older than we thought, in 2005, 4,000 year old noodles were found in north-western China, still preserved in an overturned bowl. The credit for the creation of noodles has long been argued between China and Italy, but we think this settles it!

Noodles began to be partnered with broth-based soups as early as the 1200’s. Noodles have always been considered to be a natural partner for broth-based soups because they can be kept fresh for an extended amount of time. Traditional Chinese noodle soups tend to use a chicken broth as the base, but they do vary massively throughout Asia, just like they do on our new winter lunch menu.

One of the most popular and enduring types of noodle soup is the Vietnamese Pho. Now here’s a fun fact for you… did you know that the dish was first invented during the French colonization of Vietnam in the late 1880’s? The colonisers slaughtered a huge number of cows due to their love of beef steaks, but the inventive Vietnamese cooks used their scraps and bones to create the broth for Pho! And that is how this delicious dish was discovered.

Traditional Pho uses a beef or chicken broth flavoured with various herbs and spices. Each type of Pho you try will taste and look different to the next, due to the variations in preparation and cooking technique throughout Vietnam and across the world.  At Chung Ying Central, we have our own personal recipe, containing beef brisket, rice noodles, coriander and mint!

Question time… is anyone else’s stomach rumbling? Yes? Well you’d better head down to Chung Ying Central and try the Winter Lunch menu then.