I was talking to a chef recently for an article I’m currently working on and he told me an interesting story about how Yi Fu* noodles (伊府麵) came about. For those who might not be familiar with it, it’s a type of egg noodles and its size is almost like spaghetti. When eaten, it’s almost soft to the bite.
In Chinese, it’s usually just called Yi Mian (伊麵) for short. I personally like it very much as I find it tasty and it goes well with lots of gravy or in a bowl of fish soup. According to this chef, there was this court official in ancient China who was much loved by the people in his city because he was morally upright and just, unlike many other corrupt officials. This court official’s family name was 伊 (Yi).
Feeling grateful towards this court official for all he had done for them, the people wanted to repay him. However, they were poor and couldn’t afford expensive gifts. As a show of gratitude, the people brought freshly made noodles to his household as presents. Soon his kitchen was overflowing with noodles. To prevent all the noodles from going to waste, he told his chef to deep-fry them to extend their shelf-life. After that, he told his servants to distribute the noodles back to the people.
In Chinese, the word 府 (pronounced ‘Fu’) means ‘home’ or ‘residence’. In China, many old houses will have a big wooden signboard above their front door that has the family name engraved beside the word 府. This serves to let people know which family lives in the house. Thus 伊府 means the Fu Residence / House of Fu. When the people received the noodles, they named it 伊府麵 as it came from this court official’s household.
Another story, according to Baike.Baidu (it’s China’s version of Wikipedia), is that Yi Mian originated from the household of famous Qing Dynasty calligrapher Yi Bingshou (伊秉绶) who lived from 1754-1815. In his lifetime he had been the magistrate for Huizhou prefecture (惠州) in Guangdong Province as well as the governor of Yangzhou prefecture (扬州) in Jiangsu Province.
Legend has it that he was entertaining guests in his home in Ninghua (宁化) – a city in Fujian Province – when his chef mistakenly put egg noodles that had already been cooked into a wok filled with boiling hot oil. To salvage the situation, the chef scooped up the noodles and served it together with superior stock. Unexpectedly, the guests loved the dish and sang high praises of it. The dish has since been passed down through generations. As Yi Mian tastes pretty similar to present day instant noodles, it’s also said to be the earliest ‘ancestor’ of instant noodles.
When making Yi Mian from scratch, the dough has to be pulled into strings of noodles and then cooked in water first. It then has to go through two rounds of deep-frying to get to the point where it is how we see it packed on supermarket shelves. In actual fact, Yi Mian is very fattening. But well, it remains one of my favourite noodles and it’s fine as long as I don’t eat it every day!
*Many English spellings will have it as ‘Yee Fu’ noodles but I’m following the Hanyu Pinyin spelling of the Chinese characters.