Stuffing joy without borders
“Dumplings, with a long history dating back to the Tang Dynasty thousands of years ago, have not been forgotten by the river of time. Instead, they have become one of the most important delicacies in people’s hearts,” writes Fenping Geng, co-owner of Amazing Dumplings in Squirrel Hill, in an email.
There is anthropological evidence that people have been stuffing food inside dough and boiling it since the technology of stone grinders and innovations in farming techniques allowed for the easier processing of wheat more than two thousand years ago. The precise origins of dumplings are unknown, but it’s likely something similar to what we’d recognize as a dumpling today was developed in far northwestern China or eastern Mongolia.
Driven by trade routes, particularly the ancient Silk Road, and the conquest of the Mongol Empire, dumplings became an essential part of cuisine from the far reaches of Asia to the southern tips of Europe.
“When the Mongol Empire went into decline, much of their cultural legacy was left behind to grow into its own. Thus was the case with dumplings,” the culinary historian Rachel Laudan notes in her book “Cuisine & Empire.”
