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Starters and koji from China

Women's qu (女麴), rice-cake mould starter女麴

Women's qu, as the Qimin Yaoshu quotes it from the Shici, is cooked glutinous rice pressed into cakes in a qu mould and bedded between layers of green artemisia for 21 days, until a yellow mould coat covers it, then sun-dried. It was used with wheat qu to make the wine and lees for pickling melons.

Fully documentedStarters and koji21 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts are the recipe's own, in the book's own measures (1 dan = 10 dou; 1 dou = 10 sheng).
Glutinous rice (秫稻米)3 douWashed clean and cooked soft[qmys-ws]
Green artemisia (青蒿)Laid above and below the cakes[qmys-ws]
Starterspontaneous (the text adds no starter; the cakes are bedded in green artemisia)

Total time across the recorded steps: 21 days

Start
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What changes: Glutinous rice is cooked soft and left until very cold

Step 1 of 5
Cook the glutinous rice soft and chill it
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Yeasts

Output: very cold cooked rice.

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

Women's qu, as the Qimin Yaoshu quotes it from the Shici, is cooked glutinous rice pressed into cakes in a qu mould and bedded between layers of green artemisia for 21 days, until a yellow mould coat covers it, then sun-dried. It was used with wheat qu to make the wine and lees for pickling melons. Made in 5 steps over 21 days. The longest step, bed the cakes between layers of green artemisia, takes at least 21 days (Jia Sixie 2026). Yellow mould, possibly Aspergillus oryzae does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepat least 21 daysReported[qmys-ws]Bed the cakes between layers of green artemisia

What makes this one different

Most Qimin Yaoshu qu are wheat cakes. Women's qu in the Shici is cooked glutinous rice, though a gloss in the same chapter calls it "wheat yellow coat", and the Tang writer Su Gong describes it as whole wheat. The name was used loosely.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Tang women's qu (Bencao Gangmu)Whole wheat cooked like rice, covered until a yellow coat grows, then sun-dried (Su Gong, quoted by Li Shizhen, who says women made it, hence the name).

Safety

Grain starters grown as moulds can carry mycotoxins, which are toxic compounds some moulds make on cereals, especially in warm, damp conditions; the WHO lists them as a food-safety hazard in mouldy grain. The Qimin Yaoshu gives no warning for this recipe, and this entry is history, not a tested method [who2023].

History and sources

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

Qimin Yaoshu, chapter 88, quoting the lost Shici. Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu (1578) lists women's qu as a medicine and explains the name. The FAO's 1999 fermented-cereals bulletin, citing Yokotsuka (1985), describes nu-chu as cooked rice shaped into a cake and cultured with moulds, one of three types of yellow chu [fao138].

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, Qimin Yaoshu (6th century), vol. 9, ch. 88 (作菹藏生菜法), sections 《食次》曰女麴, 釀瓜菹酒法 and 瓜菹法; Chinese text on Wikisource (齊民要術/卷第九), read 2026-10. The author line on the work's Wikisource title page (https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/齊民要術) reads 後魏賈思勰撰.archive
  2. [bencao-ws] Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu (1578), 穀之四 (fermented and brewed grains), entries 女曲 and 黃蒸; Chinese text on Wikisource (本草綱目/穀之四), read 2026-10archive
  3. [fao138] Haard N.F., Odunfa S.A., Lee C.H., Quintero-Ramírez R. et al. 1999, Fermented cereals, a global perspective, FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 138, chapter 3 (citing Yokotsuka 1985 on huang-yi, huang-tcheng and nu-chu)gov
  4. [who2023] World Health Organization, Mycotoxins, fact sheet (general hazard of mycotoxins in cereals and other foods; not about women's qu itself), read 2026-11gov