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Fish and seafood from Northern China

Preserved crab in salt-smartweed brine (藏蟹法)藏蟹

A 6th-century Qimin Yaoshu recipe for raw crab kept in a very salty brine of smartweed decoction. Live female crabs are purged in water, fed overnight in thin malt syrup, then dropped into the cold brine and mud-sealed for 20 days, after which ginger goes under each apron and they are resealed under the brine. It is mainly a salt cure; this entry is a reading of the text.

Fully documentedFish and seafood20 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe text gives no fixed amounts except that the brine must be extremely salty; crabs are packed a hundred to a vessel.
Live female crabs (broad, round apron)as caught; injured or dead crabs are not used[qmys-ws]
Thin malt syrup, boiled and cooled[qmys-ws]
Smartweed decoction with white saltenough to make the decoction extremely saltyUse little smartweed; too much makes the crab rot[qmys-ws]
Powdered gingerPlaced under each crab's apron[qmys-ws]

Total time across the recorded steps: 20 days

Start
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What changes: Live female crabs sit overnight in water to empty their bellies

Step 1 of 4
Purge the crabs overnight in water
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

One night in water empties the belly; left longer, the crab spits out its yellow and is worse.

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

A 6th-century Qimin Yaoshu recipe for raw crab kept in a very salty brine of smartweed decoction. Live female crabs are purged in water, fed overnight in thin malt syrup, then dropped into the cold brine and mud-sealed for 20 days, after which ginger goes under each apron and they are resealed under the brine. It is mainly a salt cure; this entry is a reading of the text. Made in 4 steps over 20 days. The longest step, drop into cold, very salty smartweed brine and mud-seal, takes 20 days (Jia Sixie 2026).

Key numbers
Main step20 daysReported[qmys-ws]Drop into cold, very salty smartweed brine and mud-seal

What makes this one different

The crabs are fed malt syrup before brining and the brine is a smartweed decoction, not plain brine or soy sauce. It is a salt cure more than a ferment.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Riverside method (又法)Salt-smartweed brine is boiled and carried to the river in a jar; crabs go straight in as they are caught, and the jar is mud-sealed when full. Not as good, but still good.

Safety

The text's own warnings: keep it out of the wind, or it spoils; too much smartweed rots the crab. This crab is eaten raw, and salting does not make it safe. The CDC says the lung fluke Paragonimus spreads through freshwater crab eaten raw, pickled or salted, and that crab should be cooked to at least 63 °C (145 °F). In a related modern product, a Chinese swimming-crab paste with 2 % salt kept 7 days at 4 °C, not a brine cure, Vibrio rose to about 48 % of the bacterial community by day 7 (Xiong et al. 2023). This entry is history, not a method to follow.

History and sources

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

Qimin Yaoshu (6th century), vol. 8, ch. 70 作醬法, 藏蟹法.

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 no temperature, salt percentage or pH figure for any of its steps, and no study we found has measured this recipe.
  1. [qmys-ws] Jia Sixie, Qimin Yaoshu (6th century), vol. 8, ch. 70 作醬法 (藏蟹法); Chinese text on Wikisource (齊民要術/卷第八), read 2026-10archive
  2. [wiki-qmys] Wikipedia, Qimin Yaoshu (outline of the book and its author, Jia Sixie)wiki
  3. [xiong2023-crab] Xiong T.-H., Shi C., Mu C.-K., Wang C.-L., Ye Y.-F. 2023, Rise and metabolic roles of Vibrio during the fermentation of crab paste, Frontiers in Nutrition 10:1092573, doi:10.3389/fnut.2023.1092573paper
  4. [cdc-paragonimus] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2024, About Paragonimiasisgov