Explainer | What’s in a Chinese olive? The history behind the congee ingredient
Chinese olives are not a local variant of what you put in your martini. One Hongkonger recalls her first encounter with the umami-rich fruit
As a Hongkonger, I have no childhood memories of the Chinese olive. Zero. And it wasn’t until a few years ago I had my first encounter with this fruit in pickled form. Even without tasting it, the sight of the black-green paste, swaddled in oil the colour of a dark lake, told me it was going to be rich, or at the very least, interesting. What is that? I asked my mother, pointing at the jar. Her answer was plain: “They’re olives. Put them in your congee.”
Tasting pickled olives for the first time is hard to describe, but I could tell right away I’d remember the taste for the rest of my life. It was far more subtle than what I’d thought of as a pickle – no acidity, no sharpness, no crunch. All of the soft chords and bass of a song, none of the treble: earthy umami, a silky texture, simple yet layered. And, as Mother said, fantastic on congee.
Her introduction-to-olives lesson ended there. I’m not sure she knew what Chinese olives were. She perhaps assumed the same as I, that they were olives, just grown in Asia instead of the Mediterranean. We were wrong.
Despite the name, the Chinese olive (Canarium album for Chinese white olives, Canarium pimela for Chinese black olives) is not related to its namesake in Europe (Olea europaea). Where European olives belong in the Oleaceae family of (wait for it) olive trees, Chinese olives belong in the Burseraceae family of resinous trees and shrubs, also known as incense trees. These trees are characterised by their resinous sap, which, historically, played a major role in the shipbuilding industry in China and Vietnam. Evidence suggests the tree was being cultivated for its resin as early as the 9th century.
It was far more subtle than what I’d thought of as a pickle – no acidity, no sharpness, no crunch
Similar to Taiwan, Fujian province and parts of Southeast Asia, the people of Chiuchow also chewed betel nut as a stimulant, but the practice was abandoned in the late Qing dynasty, with the nut being replaced with Chinese olives. The people of Chiuchow, however, still call it 檳榔, “betel nut”, or 珍果, “precious fruit”.