Bencao House
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Food as medicine

Jujube

大枣Dà Zǎo

四气 Nature
Warm · 温
五味 Flavour
Sweet
归经 Channels
Spleen · Stomach · Heart
Shared-origin list
2002 catalogue · 大枣

The Chinese red date is warm and sweet, and belongs to the Spleen and Stomach channels. It is the tradition’s plainest way to build blood and steady the middle, and the Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE, places it in the upper class of substances thought safe over long periods. It is paired with ginger more often than with anything else.

Five dried red jujube dates, wrinkled and deep russet, photographed on warm plaster.
Ziziphus jujuba · Whole dried fruit, split before cooking

Ziziphus jujuba

四气 · Nature

  1. cold
  2. cool
  3. neutral
  4. warm
  5. hot
Warms gently

五味 · Flavour

sour
Gathers and holdsLiver
bitter
Drains and driesHeart
sweet
Fills, slows, harmonisesSpleen
pungent
Disperses and movesLung
salty
Softens and sends downKidney
归经 Channels
Spleen · Stomach · Heart
Part used
Whole dried fruit, split before cooking
Shared-origin list
2002 catalogue · 大枣

In the canon

What the texts say

The Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE, sorts its 365 entries into three classes: 120 in the upper class, thought safe to take over long periods; 120 in the middle; 125 in the lower class, for short and specific use. The jujube, 大枣, sits in the upper class. That placement is the whole story of this fruit. It is not reached for when something is wrong. It is eaten because it is Tuesday.

Shennong Bencao JingThe Divine Husbandman’s Classic of Materia Medicac. 200 CE

Sweet and neutral. It settles the middle, nourishes the spleen, and eases the hundred medicines.

Upper class, among the fruits

The last clause is the interesting one. “Eases the hundred medicines” means the date was understood as a corrector — something added to a pot so that everything else in the pot lands more gently. That is why fresh ginger and jujube travel together through the Shanghan Lun, c. 200 CE, and why a Chinese recipe will tell you to add dates without ever saying what they are for.

The strangest and most quoted use is in the Jingui Yaolue, the companion volume to the Shanghan Lun, where a three-item formula for a restlessness that mostly affected women is made of licorice, wheat and jujube — a groceries list, written down as medicine in the second century and still in the textbooks. Li Shizhen filed the date under fruits, juan 29 of the Bencao Gangmu, when he printed it in 1596.

Jingui YaolueEssentials of the Golden Cabinetc. 200 CE

Licorice, wheat and jujube. Three things, boiled together, taken warm.

Chapter 22, on women’s complaints

In a kitchen

How it is actually used

Two rules govern the date in a Chinese kitchen, and Western recipes usually miss both. The first is that the date must be split before it goes into water: whole, its skin is nearly waterproof and you are steeping a small leather bag. The second is that dry-toasting it first changes it completely — the sugar caramelises, the cloying edge burns off, and the water it makes is thinner and easier on a full stomach.

Dry-toasted date and goji water

Two cups20 minutes

30 g · 6 whole
Dried red jujubes, split to the stone
10 g · 1 tbsp
Goji berries
500 ml · 2 cups
Water, just off the boil
  1. Split each date down one side with a small knife. Take the stone out if you would rather; the water is the same either way.
  2. Set a dry pan over medium heat with no oil at all. Lay the dates cut side down and leave them for three or four minutes, until the cut faces are dark and the kitchen smells of caramel.
  3. Tip the dates into a jug or teapot, add the goji, and pour over water that has come off the boil and stood for a minute.
  4. Cover and leave ten minutes. Drink it warm, and eat the dates — most of what you toasted is still in them.

The toasting is the whole trick. Untoasted, this is a sweet drink many people find heavy and stop making after a week. Toasted, it tastes faintly of burnt sugar and you will finish the cup.

The other place a Chinese cook uses dates is inside things rather than beside them: two or three split into a pot of chicken broth, into steamed pumpkin, into a bowl of millet congee. They are not a garnish there. They are doing the same job they do in the classical pot, which is to make the rest of it sit more easily.

Who it is for

Who it suits, and who it does not

Sweet, in the classical vocabulary, means filling and slowing. That is useful in a body that is running empty and unhelpful in a body that is already congested. The date is a reliable indicator of which one you are: if six dates in water leave you comfortable, you were probably running empty. If they leave you bloated by the afternoon, they were not for you.

Tends to suit

  • Tiredness that is worse in the days after a period.
  • Pale lips and pale nail beds, and bruises that arrive from nothing.
  • A small appetite, and getting full faster than seems reasonable.
  • A mind that will not settle at night without being obviously anxious.
  • Recovery weeks — after illness, after travel, after a hard stretch.

Tends not to suit

  • Bloating and fullness that is already the main complaint.
  • A thick, greasy coat on the tongue.
  • Anyone counting sugar carefully — a date is mostly sugar.
  • Phlegm that is thick and constant, or a wet cough.
  • Toothache or reflux that sweet things reliably make worse.

Honestly

What to know before you start

The reading

Jujube suits some people and not others

This page describes a food. It cannot tell you whether it belongs in your week, because it knows nothing about how you sleep, eat or feel the cold. A reading does: thirty questions, one photograph of your tongue, and a document written in English by a physician licensed in China for US $39, sent within 48 hours.

Begin a reading$39Read a sample report