Suzhou Time-honored Cake Group Huang Tianyuan

Speaking of Suzhou Huang Tianyuan pastry group store with a long history, it was founded in the first year of Daoguang (182 1) according to the investigation of Sunan Federation of Industry and Commerce in the early days of liberation and the records of Wuxian pastry group workers. Huang Qiting, a native of Cixi, Zhejiang Province, set up a zongzi stand at Dongdu Pavilion Bridge. Zongzi is of good quality and business is not bad. After several years of operation, I rented a small house in Dutingqiao and opened a Huang Tianyuan dim sum shop. The varieties supplied are gradually increasing, including five-color dumplings, vermicelli dumplings, salty rice cakes, salty lard cakes, yellow muffins, dumplings in grey soup, sweet potatoes with sugar and oil, etc. After the death of Huang Qiting and his son, Huang Tianyuan pastry shop was run by his widowed daughter-in-law Huang Chen. Business has gone from bad to worse due to poor management. By 1874, the shop and master Gu Guilin had been burned, and the price was Yin Yang 1000 yuan. In addition, the annual rent of signboards in Huang Tianyuan is twelve stone meters. From then on, it was actually a shop named Gu.

After Gu Guilin took over from Huang Tianyuan, she improved her cake-making skills, worked hard, and the store business was booming. 193 1 year, Gu Guilin gave the shop to his son Gu Zifeng. Gu Zifeng is practical and capable. In addition to operating a pastry shop in the west of Duting Bridge in Huang Tianyuan, she rented a house at No.241Guanqian Street to open East Huang Tianyuan. 1947 Gu Zifeng died at the age of 73. Huang Tianyuan was adopted by his adopted grandson Gu Nianchun because his only son had already died. Gu Nianchun studied in a bank and took over the business of the cake troupe. 1948 bought the first floor and street-facing houses on the first floor of No.241Guanqian Street from Xiangxu. Because Guanqian Street was relatively prosperous, although there were only six and a half tables on the first floor and the bottom floor at that time, the varieties supplied at the beginning were only five-color glutinous rice balls, gray soup glutinous rice balls, sweet potatoes with sugar and oil, lard cakes and yellow muffins, but they were often full. Seasonal cakes mainly include green dumplings, pumpkin dumplings, Chongyang cakes and fairy cakes at the beginning of the year, and a large number of sugar rice cakes are supplied at the end of each year. The colors of sugar rice cakes are varied, ranging from a few kilograms at the largest to a dozen pieces at the smallest, from large to small pagodas. There are also sugar ingots, which are as big as fists and as small as thumbs, and you can choose. When people buy cakes, they must buy some gold ingots. Rich people pick a few sizes, take them home and put them on a plate, spread red paper-cuts (similar to window grilles), insert cypress seeds, and serve them with oranges and olives, and put them at the front desk of the bed on New Year's Eve. Offering red candles and incense before the dish (not ordered) is called keeping the year. I wish you peace and happiness next year.

At that time, there was a famous sweet potato in Huang Tianyuan. It is strictly raised, and sweet potatoes must be purchased from Yixing. If we are out of stock at the moment, we would rather stop supplying (it is said that Yixing sweet potato is delicate and crisp, which is incomparable to other sweet potatoes). White sugar is made of top grade, and the cooking technology strives to be coarse and fine, which is extremely serious. When processing, the sweet potato is washed first, roasted in a large pot with slow fire, and then added with white sugar to paste until it is half crisp, so that the sugar taste penetrates the heart, and then the steel can be lifted; Pour in the boiled sugar and oil, and then serve it on the counter. Sweet potato with leading sugar and oil is bright in color. When you cut it open, it is full of red eyes and rich fragrance. The population is crispy and sweet. Especially loved by Suzhou people and overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia.

Gu Nianchun's management of Huang Tianyuan has developed with the changes of the times. In the products in the store, Gu Nianchun pays great attention to the variety and high quality. In the early days of liberation, he led the workers out of the store many times and visited Wuxi Wangxingji Wonton Store. I also worked with workers * * * to develop new varieties such as fried noodles and shrimp wonton on the basis of fried meat jiaozi. After the fried noodles and lasagna are cooked, they are put into cold boiled water and stirred to dry, and then seasoned with homemade shrimp soy sauce, which is delicious and refreshing. Noodles are poured with sandwich lean meat, and the first-class raw materials such as day lily, black fungus, Tianmu Mountain flat tip and shrimp are selected, which are deeply loved by customers. Until today, all kinds of cakes in Huang Tianyuan enjoy a high reputation, and all kinds of noodles with fried meat and shrimp are original and distinctive, and customers can never get tired of eating them.

As Huang Tianyuan became more and more famous, 1956 was a public-private partnership at that time and merged into Tianyuan Li and Feng Bingji. Personnel, capital and technical force are more abundant, and business varieties are also increasing year by year. According to the season, varieties with timely colors are introduced throughout the year, such as sugar rice cakes, lard rice cakes and rice dumplings on the first day of the first month, sugar rice cakes on the fifteenth day of the first month, fried rice cakes on the second day of February, green dumplings in Tomb-Sweeping Day in March, fairy cakes on April 14th, various zongzi on the fifth day of May, mung bean cakes, mint cakes and rice maple cakes in June, and cowpea cakes on July 15th. Huang Tianyuan not only supplies various varieties on time according to the changes of solar terms, but also introduces marketable varieties as festive and auspicious gifts according to the customs of Suzhou people, and presents them to each other as congratulations. There are birthday balls and cakes for the elderly, honey cakes and jiaozi for girls to get married, shavings jiaozi and one-year-old jiaozi for children's full moon and one-year-old birthdays, flat jiaozi for students, and cakes for new houses and housewarming.

During the period of 1956, around the National Day, Suzhou Food Exhibition was held in Sanqing Pavilion, displaying more than 1000 kinds of dishes. It is really a world food pavilion to eat. There are many kinds of tofu, including lotus seed tofu, apple tofu, fried tofu and sister-in-law tofu. The most striking thing is Huang He's model of Sanqing Hall made of rice flour. It is nearly 60 cm long and 1 m high, with upturned cornices and blue tiles and yellow walls. There are 65,438+02 long windows carved in the center of the main entrance. The three gods in the hall are magnificent and have 30 pillars. The Baoding in front of the temple has a straight line, which is particularly magical. Zhou Shoujuan wrote an article praising this exhibition, which is really an ingenious work of art.

Since 1980s, Huang Tianyuan has continuously expanded its shops and workshops. There are two halls, Guanqian Street (No.86 ~ 88) and the East Corner Gate of Xuanmiaoguan. There are more than 200 kinds of cakes, and more than 60 kinds are served every day. In recent years, on the basis of the original, other gift cakes have been innovated and developed, and new cakes with delicious taste, beautiful shape and beautiful decoration have been designed and produced with reference to cake decoration. These products have entered thousands of households through our specialty stores and branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities as well as Anhui and Xinjiang, and are exported at home and abroad. In April, 1995, Suzhou Food Festival was held in Hong Kong, focusing on the products of century-old Caizhizhai and Huang Tianyuan, supplemented by other traditional foods, highlighting the three characteristics of Suzhou's tradition, flavor and characteristics. The main foods are cakes, sweets, candied fruit, roasted seeds and nuts, etc., which are in short supply and are well received by compatriots in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai.

1995165438+10, Huang Tianyuan Cake Group Store held the first Huang Tianyuan Cake Group Food Festival for one week on the occasion of 175, showing more than 300 traditions of1-kloc-0/February. Among them, there are sweet-scented osmanthus white (yellow) sugar rice cakes that won the Golden Ding Award in Central and South China, as well as Soviet-style sesame balls with scallion oil, four-color lard rice cakes, seasonal cakes of various colors, quick-frozen series of cake balls, large-scale art cake balls, etc., which have different shapes and are available internally. Its refined color cake won the gold medal at the 1996 International Food Processing Technology Expo held in Beijing.