I was quite surprised to learn that milk sweet soup is a dessert originating from Hue, not a new snack from Saigon - where dairy ingredients are quite popular in delicious dishes for young people.

Thua Thien Hue is a region with many dishes honored in the “Journey to find the cultural value of typical Vietnamese cuisine” including Hue beef noodles, tapioca dumplings stuffed with roasted pork sweet soup, mussel rice, tapioca dumplings, mixed vegetarian fig salad, vegetarian rice steamed in lotus leaf.

Thua Thien Hue has the most dishes honored in Phase I of the project, including Hue beef noodle soup, tapioca dumpling stuffed with roasted pork sweet soup, mussel rice, tapioca dumplings, vegetarian fig salad, and vegetarian steamed rice wrapped in lotus leaf.

These are 6 of 121 Vietnamese culinary dishes that have just been honored by the Vietnam Cuisine Culture Association (VCCA) as typical national dishes in phase I of a project titled "Building and Developing Vietnamese Culinary Culture into a National Brand Name”. All of these 6 dishes, including: Hue beef noodle soup, glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with roasted pork in sweet soup, mussel rice, banh loc (glutinous rice dumplings), vegetarian fig salad, and lotus-leaf-wrapped steamed rice; all are close to the gardens and paddy fields of the land.

Few people think that common fishy ingredient can be used to make that strange che (a sweet dish). But more than that, in Minh Mang’s era, Thai Y Vien (the Medical Institute) studied and adjusted the ingredients to make it one of the 25 royal sweet dishes.

Hue is considered the land of sweet soups with more than 50 kinds. Through the hands of Hue women, many kinds of fruits, seeds and tubers are processed into delicious and appealing sweet soup dishes. Among Hue sweet soup dishes, khoai mai sweet soup is a precious type that is very suitable for the early days of spring.