The name translates as fried heap in Mandarin, a description of the rounded, piled form. In Cantonese they are jin deui. In American dim sum restaurants they are sesame balls, which is accurate but strips away the fourteen centuries of history attached to the original name.

That history begins in Chang’an — the Tang Dynasty capital, modern-day Xi’an — where jiān duī were known as lüdui and served as imperial palace food sometime between 618 and 907 CE. The Tang Dynasty poet Wang Fanzhi mentioned them in verse, which is one of the earliest written records of any specific Chinese pastry, and suggests that by the 7th century they were already established enough to be worth writing about. Palace food in Tang China was a marker of refinement and access. A pastry that warranted a poem from a court poet was not an ordinary street snack.

The transition from palace to populace happened through migration. The An Lushan Rebellion of the 8th century destabilized the Tang court and drove large numbers of people from the central plains southward toward Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan — the Lingnan region. They brought jiān duī with them. Cantonese cuisine absorbed the pastry and made it central to its own repertoire, and it is through Cantonese cooking that jiān duī became known to the rest of the world — through dim sum culture, through the Cantonese diaspora, through Chinatown bakeries in cities across Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe.

The fillings vary by region and era. Lotus seed paste is the traditional and most prestigious filling, lotus seeds being a historically expensive ingredient associated with refinement. Red bean paste is the everyday standard. Black sesame paste, taro, and mung bean appear in regional versions. In the Philippines, the Chinese-influenced buchi uses ube or mung bean and fries to a deeper caramel brown. In Malaysia and Indonesia, onde-onde uses palm sugar and coconut in a boiled rather than fried version — a related but distinct object. The original fried, sesame-coated, lotus-filled ball remains the reference point for all of them.

In Hong Kong, jiān duī are one of the most standard pastries — available at every dim sum restaurant, every Chinese bakery, every street stall that sells fried things. They are served in small portions at the end of a dim sum meal or eaten as a standalone snack at any point in the day. The imperial context has long since dissolved. What remains is a pastry that has been eaten continuously for over a thousand years, which is a form of endorsement that no amount of court poetry can improve on.

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Regional Roots

• Guangzhou