What it is
Fenyuan bing (粉圓冰) is a bowl of shaved ice with tapioca pearls and brown-sugar syrup. Fenyuan are small balls of starch, cooked until chewy and glossy. The dark kind are the same 'pearls' (珍珠) found in bubble tea. Most shops let you add more toppings, such as taro balls, glutinous rice balls (湯圓) or brown-sugar jelly (黑糖粉粿).
Where it came from
Nobody knows exactly how the pearls reached Taiwan. One account has them arriving from abroad, possibly through China, where they were said to have been offered as tribute to the Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后). On the island they became an ingredient in night-market sweets.
The food writer Huang Wan-ling (黃婉玲) records that early Taiwanese fenyuan were white and not as tiny as sago. The sweet potato starch of the time could only make white pearls. A new sweet potato variety, which appeared some sixty years before her book, gave chewier, slightly brownish pearls. Buyers preferred them, and the white kind faded out. Old-style pearls did not hold up to long soaking. Some modern makers add caramel for a darker colour and a brown-sugar taste.
In the 1980s the pearls moved from ice bowls into milk tea. Two tea houses, one in Tainan and one in Taichung, each claim to have done it first.
How it is made
Today the pearls are usually made from cassava (tapioca) starch, or from potato or sweet potato starch, mixed with water and sugar. They are about 5 to 10 mm across. Traditionally, cooks lifted the boiled pearls out and rinsed them in cold water to wash off loose starch so they would not stick. Left in water too long they swell and turn mushy, so timing comes from experience. Modern pearls are often steeped in brown sugar. A scoop goes over shaved ice, followed by brown-sugar syrup.
How to eat it
A cheap afternoon cool-down, sold at traditional ice shops and stalls. Ask for fenyuan bing, then pick any extra toppings, which usually cost a little more. Shops of this kind often also sell red bean, grass jelly and lemon aiyu ices. Huang Family in Kaohsiung offers a handmade pudding as an add-on.
Around Taiwan
- Tainan
- Hanlin Tea Room (翰林茶館) dates its pearl milk tea to 1986. The story goes that its founder, Tu Tsung-ho (涂宗和), had spotted white tapioca balls for sale at Yamuliao Market (鴨母寮市場) in Tainan.
- Kaohsiung
- Huang Family Tapioca Ice (黃家粉圓冰), on Henan 2nd Road near Sanfeng Temple (三鳳宮), keeps its basic bowl very cheap. Customers order at a self-service machine, and many add the shop's handmade pudding.
- Central
- Chun Shui Tang (春水堂) in Taichung credits a 20-year-old employee, Lin Hsiu-hui (林秀慧), with first putting tapioca balls into milk tea in 1987.
