Fish Fin Stew from an Old Calendar

A bowl of Fish Fin Soup

This recipe is one of more than 300 recipes printed on my old calendar.

As someone living in Indonesia, food like this is not something common—or even familiar—in everyday life. A dish made from fish fin, slowly stewed with ginseng, feels distant from my daily kitchen, both culturally and practically. And maybe that distance is exactly why I’m drawn to it.

Fish fin dishes have a long history in Chinese cuisine, especially in banquet cooking. For centuries, they appeared at imperial feasts, weddings, and important celebrations. Not because they were strongly flavored—they are actually quite mild—but because they were rare, difficult to prepare, and time-consuming.

In traditional food culture, rarity often became symbolism. Serving fish fin once meant wealth, power, and the ability to host generously. To offer it to guests was to show respect and social standing. This calendar recipe even states it plainly: people ate it “to display personal status or identity.”

Over time, fish fin came to symbolize:

• Prosperity and prestige

• Honor toward guests

• Patience and abundance, because slow cooking was essential

Fish fin is rich in collagen protein, traditionally believed to support skin, bones, joints, and blood vessels. In older food traditions, this aligned with the idea that what looks strong or elastic will strengthen the body in the same way.

Yet the text is surprisingly honest for its time. It admits that fish fin does not contain rare or essential elements the body truly needs. Its high value came not from necessity, but from scarcity. This small sentence quietly reveals a shift—from food as medicine to food as symbol.

Fish Fin Soup

In many older Chinese home recipes, calendars, and household guides, “fish fin” does not actually refer to the outer fins of a fish, and often does not mean shark fin either. What it most commonly points to is fish maw.

Fish maw is the dried swim bladder of large fish—an internal organ that helps fish float. When dried, it becomes hard and light, almost unrecognizable, and only reveals its true nature after long soaking and slow cooking.

Unlike ingredients chosen for bold flavor, fish maw is valued for its texture and symbolism. Once simmered, it turns soft and gently gelatinous, absorbing the taste of the broth it’s cooked in. In traditional Chinese food culture, it represents abundance, nourishment, and care—a quiet kind of richness rather than extravagance. 

The preparation is gentle and minimal:
soak, clean, tear into pieces, then stew slowly with ginseng and hot water in an electric cooker. There are no bold seasonings, no strong aromas. The dish relies on time rather than technique.

It feels less like a recipe meant to impress, and more like a record of how people once defined nourishment and luxury.

The wording in old recipes reflects how people spoke at the time, not the precision we expect today. Reading them now feels a bit like listening to a grandparent’s instructions—some details are assumed, others left unspoken.

Today, many of us choose to preserve these recipes as culinary memory rather than obligation. Understanding what the ingredient meant historically allows us to honor the past thoughtfully, whether we cook it as written, adapt it, or simply remember it.

For me, discovering this explanation feels like part of the joy of these old recipes: not just learning how people cooked, but why certain ingredients once mattered.