MUZIChinese Matrix
Beijing-Tianjin Cuisine · FFET10101
Roast duck uses 2 oven methods, closed and hung, with Bianyifang and Quanjude’s techniques sharing an entry on the national intangible cultural heritage list.
A round white porcelain plate holds glossy red-brown slices of roast duck, beside a dish of sweet bean sauce, strips of scallion and cucumber, and a bamboo steamer with a short stack of thin pancakes.
The regional cooking of Beijing and Tianjin, where court, halal and other regional flavours meet.
Peking duck is a fattened duck roasted until the skin is glossy and crisp, carved at the table and eaten rolled in thin pancakes with sweet bean sauce, scallion strips and cucumber. There are 2 traditional methods: Bianyifang’s closed brick oven is heated before the fire is removed, so the duck cooks from heat stored in the walls with no open flame; Quanjude’s hung oven roasts the duck over a fruitwood fire. Xu Ke’s Qingbai Leichao (usually dated 1916, though one account puts its first printing in 1917) mentions Bianyifang’s roast duck in its account of banquets in the capital and records duck-fattening methods elsewhere. This establishes the house and dish in the Beijing of that period, not their year of origin. The founding dates of Bianyifang in Ming Yongle year 14 (about 1416) and Quanjude in 1864 come from the houses’ official accounts.
Peking duck is a fattened duck roasted until the skin is glossy and crisp, carved at the table and eaten rolled in thin pancakes, dipped in sweet bean sauce, with scallion strips and cucumber.1,6,8
Xu Ke’s Qingbai Leichao (usually dated 1916, though one account puts its first printing in 1917) mentions Bianyifang’s roast duck at banquets in the capital during the Guangxu jichou and gengyin years (1889–1890). Another entry, on the foods of the capital, records duck-fattening methods and says they had not spread to the south. This establishes the house and dish in Beijing then, not their year of origin. The founding dates of Bianyifang in Ming Yongle year 14 (about 1416) and Quanjude in 1864 (Tongzhi year 3) come from the houses’ official accounts, without documents from those times to confirm them.1,2,5,6,9
Beijing, and in its history the Qianmen and Xianyukou area in particular: Bianyifang has a branch at Xianyukou, and Quanjude’s founder opened his shop at Qianmen.2,5,7
There are 2 traditional roasting methods. Closed-oven duck (Bianyifang) uses a brick oven preheated for about 5 hours before the fire is removed. The duck cooks behind a closed door using heat stored in the walls, with no open flame. Hung-oven duck (Quanjude) hangs over a fruitwood fire at about 270 degrees Celsius for 30 to 40 minutes. Preparation involves slaughtering and cleaning the duck, blowing air under the skin to separate it from the flesh, scalding and drying the skin, brushing it with maltose syrup and leaving it for about 1 day before roasting; Bianyifang’s shang yi glazing step does not name the sugar. At the table, the skin is carved first, then the meat.3,6,11
Origin accounts trace Peking duck to Nanjing roast duck brought to the Ming court and describe Quanjude hiring a former Qing palace cook to make hung-oven duck. No document from the time in the listed sources confirms these accounts.1,7
In 2008, roast duck techniques entered the 2nd batch of the national intangible cultural heritage list (VIII-167), covering Bianyifang’s closed-oven technique (item no. 950, applicant Beijing Bianyifang Roast Duck Group) and Quanjude’s hung-oven technique (applicant Beijing Quanjude (Group) Co., Ltd.). Peking duck has 2 lineages: Quanjude’s hung oven and Bianyifang’s closed oven. The claim of more than 160 years of Quanjude hung-oven craft comes from the group’s official account.3,4,5,11
Legend has it that the founding emperor of the Ming liked to eat roast duck with his children in Nanjing. When his son moved the capital to Beijing he missed the taste and had roast duck brought to the court, where people called it southern oven duck.
Told in: A folk account told in Nanjing and Beijing, found in Chinese Wikipedia’s retelling; the entry relays it with the word ’reportedly’ and gives no source.
Legend has it that the Ming official Yang Jisheng ate at a small shop near Caishikou and praised it as convenient and good value for money, and that is how it came to be called Bianyifang.
Told in: A folk legend told about Bianyifang near Caishikou in Beijing, found in a 2023 Beijing tourism article, which gives no source for it and does not explain how the tale fits the house’s own founding date in the Yongle years.
It is said that Yang Quanren bought a failing dried-fruit shop on the meat-market street at Qianmen, renamed it Quanjude and hired a cook trained in the Qing palace kitchens, who set up the hung-oven roasting.
Told in: The founding story of Quanjude, told in Beijing and found in Chinese Wikipedia and a Beijing tourism article; it is the house’s own story, and the sources listed include no document from the time.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
Restaurants roast Peking duck in a closed or hung oven, which a home kitchen does not have, so this is my simplified home way: brush a whole duck with syrup, leave it uncovered in the refrigerator overnight and roast it in the home oven until cooked through. The traditional preparation blows air under the skin and scalds it, and I leave those steps out. The honey in the syrup is my substitute for the maltose used traditionally. The reference recipe brushes on the leftover syrup only after roasting; I use honey and worry about it scorching, so I do the same. The amounts and timings below largely follow one home-oven recipe with amounts, and the size of the duck is my own choice; for the traditional method I drew on two descriptions.
Allergens: soy, wheat
