Madame Trương Đăng Thị Bích.
Madame Bích was the daughter-in-law of Prince Tùng Thiện Vương Miên Thẩm. In 1910, she published an original cookbook in verse. Entitled Thực phổ bách thiên (Cookbook of One Hundred Dishes), the book contains 102 poems, each with four rhymed lines of seven words each.
Hue is famous as a centre of both poetry and cuisine. Madame Bích's cookbook united these two Vietnamese traditions in what has been called "the pinnacle of Hue" culture." Like other classic Vietnamese poets, Trương Đăng Thị Bích wrote in nom, which is the ancient Vietnamese ideographic script understood by educated elites of the time. The cookbook was intended for use in the home, yet it has high social and literary value.
The collection begins with a poem, "Tổng luận" (General summary), giving basic instructions for cooking a meal or, perhaps also, for writing a poem:
General Summary
Whether meat or vegetable
A dish should be colourful
With each ingredient fresh
And prepared to perfection
The next poem describes cooking rice, the first step in preparing a meal. The other one hundred recipes in the book include nine for poultry (doves, steamed chicken, and roasted sparrow); seventeen for meats (lamb, rabbit, goat, and pork); twelve for scaly fish such as tuna; six for scale-less fish such as eels; ten for crabs and shrimps; and four for other sea products (abalones, shark bladder, and shark fish fins). The remaining dishes are balanced between fruits and vegetables (potatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants) and sauces made from soybeans, chillies, and fish sauce.
Each poem gives clear instructions for that dish. Modern-day readers can still use the recipes, as the following example shows:
Fried Pumpkin Flowers
Choose flowers just ready to bloom
Blanch, remove the skins and hearts
But keep the stems. Tuck in shrimps
Fry first, and boil with medium heat
Although a member of the royal family wrote this volume, only thirty-four of its recipes use the court cuisine's unusual and expensive ingredients. The remaining recipes are for popular, everyday foods that are attractive in sight, aroma, and taste yet easy enough for anyone to make.