Our discussion of phở begins with China, which held hegemony in Việtnam for over 1000 years. China’s dynastic period began in 111 BCE, with the consolidation of Nanyue by the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE), and ended in 938 CE, with Việtnam’s victory at the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. During its long dominance, China both captivated and catalyzed Việtnam’s culinary development. Arguably the most vital of China’s long-reaching influences: fěn, the unassuming rice noodle.
Though the Italians and Arabs have, in turn, laid claim to the noodle, it is China that boasts empirical evidence of invention. The first written accounts of the noodle date back to China’s East Han Dynasty (25 - 220 CE). By ca. 300 CE, the poet Shu Xi had written an ode to Chinese wheat products, naming several types of noodles and the processes by which they are made: “Flour sifted twice / Flying snow of white powder / Kneaded with water or broth, it becomes shiny / … / Soft as silk floss in the springtime / White as autumn silk.” Furthermore, in October 2005, archeologists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Sciences unearthed a 4000 year-old bowl of noodles at the Lajia archaeological site in northwestern China. The team determined that the noodles were made of millet, an indigenous small-seeded grain cultivated as early as the Neolithic period (6000 BCE):
“Houyuan Lu and colleagues compared the shape andpatterning of the starch grains and seed husks in the
noodle bowl with modern crops and concluded the noodles
were made from 2 kinds of millet—broomcorn & foxtail.”
Millet and other wheat-based Chinese noodles bear a resemblance to their European pasta counterparts; both are held together by gluten, which, when wetted, forms elastic associations with water. Gluten, which the Chinese aptly call “the muscle of dough,” consists mainly of glutenin proteins which form strong sulfur-sulfur bonds, in addition to weak/temporary hydrogen and hydrophobic bonds: the result is a tenacious mesh of coiled protein that gives dough its cohesiveness.
Conversely, Chinese rice noodles (fěn; in Việtnamese, banh phở) are held together by amylose, a starch molecule whose glucose sugars are lined in a straight chain, like so: -<-/-<-/-<-/-<-/-<. Its small size and simple shape allows amylose to settle easily into ordered, tightly-bound clusters; higher concentrations of amylose thereby make for firmer noodles. Noodles made from pure starch are glassy and translucent with a slippery texture e.g. harusame (“spring rain”) noodles, made from potato starch, or cellophane noodles, made from mung beans. Rice noodles, however, are not translucent; they are not made of pure starch. Instead, rice noodles contain proteins and cell-wall particles that scatter light, rendering them an opaque white color.
The noodles are traditionally set in beautiful, long, unbroken skeins, symbolizing longevity.
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T H E G A S T R I C T I O N A R Y :
Gluten [glüt-ən]: A tenacious, elastic mixture of wheat proteins that do not dissolve in water. Gluten, which the Chinese aptly call “the muscle of dough,” consists mainly of glutenin proteins which readily form strong sulfur-sulfur bonds, in addition to weak/temporary hydrogen and hydrophobic bonds: the result is a complex mesh of coiled protein that gives dough its cohesiveness.
Amylose [a-mə-lōs]: A starch molecule consisting of approximately 1,000 glucose units, set in 1,4 alpha linkages, thereby creating a straight, extended chain (represented, punctuationally, as -<-/-<-/-<-/-<-/-<). It’s small size and simple shape allows amylose to settle easily into orderly clusters.
